Jolly Pumpkin dregs

I have a 2.5 gal. batch of this BYO article La Roja Clone recipe going, 3 months in. Haven't tasted it yet but I made a batch of brown ale and stole 1 gal, put it on La Roja and absolutely love it. Unfortunately only 6 bottles left. Not really sour or funky (at last tasting) mostly tart.

Weezy said:

I don't recall this being the case based on Oldsock's interviews in his sour book. Iirc and I don't have the book in front of me, they use lacto and no pedio. I don't recall anything regarding spontaneous fermentation. What's the source of your info?

Click to expand...

Open, not spontaneous. They pitch yeast, then ferment in large open top vessels. Air is pumped into the fermenting rooms, bringin bacteria and wild yeasts. Source, their website, Ron Jefferies, and Oldsocks book. Spontaneous would have nothing purposely added. They add wlp550, then pump in cool night air from Dexter, which has something magical in it.

MileHighBrewer said:

Open, not spontaneous. They pitch yeast, then ferment in large open top vessels. Air is pumped into the fermenting rooms, bringin bacteria and wild yeasts. Source, their website, Ron Jefferies, and Oldsocks book. Spontaneous would have nothing purposely added. They add wlp550, then pump in cool night air from Dexter, which has something magical in it.

Click to expand...

I went back and looked... you're right! I forgot the details.... but its a bit disingenuous since the bugs are predominantly coming from what's in the barrels and not what is blown in by the HVAC. anyways, good info.

added the dregs from a JP saison to my saison roughly the first of October and it is wonderful. Both sour and tart. Just put it on tap the other day, simply dumped the dregs from a bottle into a finished keg of beer.

I just added the dregs from Persimmon Ship to an all brett on cantaloupe that I have in secondary. It's 2 months old now. I'll take a sample again in a month and see where it stands.
It's at 1.01 now and has a nice fruity tart.

I brewed a Bam Biere clone in August, fermented with Bam Biere dregs. I split the batch into 2 three gallon carboys. I bottled one today with a FG of 1.004. It was extremely sour!
The other I racked onto a couple pounds of paw paw fruit. Fermented with the fruit for about two weeks- paw paw is super sugary- and am going to keep it in tertiary for another few months.

griddler said:

I brewed a Bam Biere clone in August, fermented with Bam Biere dregs. I split the batch into 2 three gallon carboys. I bottled one today with a FG of 1.004. It was extremely sour!
The other I racked onto a couple pounds of paw paw fruit. Fermented with the fruit for about two weeks- paw paw is super sugary- and am going to keep it in tertiary for another few months.

Click to expand...

You fermented 5 gallons with the dregs from one bottle? Do you recall how old the bottle(s) was? If

I'm interested in the details of your process because I'm looking at something similar.

stpug said:

You fermented 5 gallons with the dregs from one bottle? Do you recall how old the bottle(s) was? If

I'm interested in the details of your process because I'm looking at something similar.

Click to expand...

I got dregs from two bottles of Bam Biere. Pretty sure they were both around 6-9 months old. Not the freshest, but...
In this case I made a starter with the dregs. That being said, I would advise against the starter because the different bugs require different amounts of oxygen and can grow disproportionate to their original ratio. My grain bill was the same as the BB clone and I hopped it with sterling.

griddler said:

I got dregs from two bottles of Bam Biere. Pretty sure they were both around 6-9 months old. Not the freshest, but...
In this case I made a starter with the dregs. That being said, I would advise against the starter because the different bugs require different amounts of oxygen and can grow disproportionate to their original ratio. My grain bill was the same as the BB clone and I hopped it with sterling.

Click to expand...

Thanks for getting back on this. My dregs from 2 bottles are in the 24 MONTHS old category - ouch! My intention was to pitch plain old dregs at the same time as sacc and wait it out. I suspect I'll have a bit longer of a wait than you did but I'll just put the fermenter out of the way (out of sight out of mind)

I just pitched some 4 mo Oro de Calabaza with TYB Wallonian into a saison. Pretty excited.

Brewed 2/7, 1.055 OG and already down to 1.006. Pitched at 67, raised to 76 over 4 days and held there.

Today I racked this to secondary. Gravity is currently 1.010. Citrus like tartness. A bit of earthy or meaty like Brett character. Reminds me a lot of a jolly pumpkin beer. I think this should come out well in a few months.

I am reusing the yeast cake to brew a dark Flanders like sour ale. Half will get the last of my ECY Bug County, the other half will get some Russian River dregs and whatever else I decide to drink today.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?list=PLC-XVTwi5Jd5GluJqcUijgFpLNz0qFsBr&v=lNc47kU8OVY

Here is a great interview with Ron Jeffries from JP. It's a little long and he talks about many aspects of his brewery. But he does touch on the yeast they use and how they use it.

I have sampled this beer twice now. It is getting more sour. It was 4.7brix about a month ago now it's down to 4.4, still moving apparently. Pretty tart with some fruity and earthy brett character. I have 1 gallon that is in a jug with a couple oak cubes and the yeast cake. This is much more sour than the 3 gallons in the better bottle. Same reading on the refractometer though.

soundguy said:

I have sampled this beer twice now. It is getting more sour. It was 4.7brix about a month ago now it's down to 4.4, still moving apparently. Pretty tart with some fruity and earthy brett character. I have 1 gallon that is in a jug with a couple oak cubes and the yeast cake. This is much more sour than the 3 gallons in the better bottle. Same reading on the refractometer though.

Click to expand...

You are using a refractometer to measure the gravity? You wont get a correct reading doing that to fermenting or already fermented beer. Use a hydrometer for anything and everything after pitching yeast. That beer should be a lot lower than ~1.016

BTW, great thread with a lot of good info. I plan to get some JP sours going at some point and the information here is very helpful. I know not to make a starter to keep this stuff on hand now!

finsfan said:

You are using a refractometer to measure the gravity? You wont get a correct reading doing that to fermenting or already fermented beer. Use a hydrometer for anything and everything after pitching yeast. That beer should be a lot lower than ~1.016

BTW, great thread with a lot of good info. I plan to get some JP sours going at some point and the information here is very helpful. I know not to make a starter to keep this stuff on hand now!

Click to expand...

It sounded to me like he was just using the refractometer to see if the brix continue to drop (i.e. to see if attenuation is continuing to take place), in which case it's an ideal tool for this purpose since it only requires a few drops and you're just looking to see if the brix have dropped since last time. At least that's how I interpreted his post.

As for final gravity, a hydrometer might prove more useful but then again my understanding is that when it comes to sour beers (acidic solutions) even a hydrometer is a prone to significant error.

stpug said:

As for final gravity, a hydrometer might prove more useful but then again my understanding is that when it comes to sour beers (acidic solutions) even a hydrometer is a prone to significant error.

Click to expand...

Any more information you can pass along regarding this? Im not sure I've ever heard this and not sure how the pH of the beer would have any effect on a hydrometer reading.

finsfan said:

Any more information you can pass along regarding this? Im not sure I've ever heard this and not sure how the pH of the beer would have any effect on a hydrometer reading.

Click to expand...

After searching back through my bookmarks and whittling out the "sketchy" sources, I think the best source is probably from M. Tonsmeire himself. The end result is much more benign than I alluded to previously in regards to hydrometers and sour beers, but there is some small impact.

http://www.themadfermentationist.com/2013/11/calculating-abv-for-sour-beers.html

Which was spurred on from a discussion on reddit between him and some other members:
http://www.reddit.com/r/Homebrewing/comments/1rffzc/how_to_calculate_abv_of_sourwild_beers/

I just used the refractometer to see if the gravity is actually moving. It is much easier than pulling out a larger hydrometer sample. It is especially nice for one gallon jugs, where doing a couple hydrometer readings could drastically reduce the batch size. When I eventually package this I will take an actual hydrometer reading to find the gravity and abv. I have tried the calculations in the past and have never found them to be very acurate.

this is awesome. I love JP beers and have 2 sours going. One is 8 months along and the other is 2 months, no dregs pitched yet but may go for it soon. the 8 month one has great flavor but almost no tart/sourness. the 2 month one is the re-used Rosealare yeast cake so that one may sour quicker.
Sounds like a sach strain and pitch some dregs is a great way to go.

I have WL sour blend and Belle saison. May get 2 bottles of JP the next time a friend visits and get a Flanders and Saison going.

Has anyone used Belle Saison with JP dregs? Belle attenuates super low similar to 3711. I'll plan to mash higher like 156 to help combat this.

Stoked!

I just used a little bit of the beer to inoculate about a gallon of fermented wit from a friend. We'll see where this goes in the coming months. I wonder if secondary fermentation with this will be as quick and aggressive as primary was. I think the FG was only about 1.010 so there should be a lot of fermentables left.

Finally got around to bottling this today. 1.006, higher than I expected but it has been stable for 2 months. Very tart and fruity, can't wait to have it carbed up. I racked 1 gallon onto some blackberries, and used some of the leftover yeast in part of a Belgian blonde I brewed today.

@hopbrad I have used some of this beer to inoculate a saison I brewed with 3711, I haven't taken any samples yet, but should be ready to in a month or so.

So after a few days of secondary I noticed my airlock had gotten filled with some blackberry juice. I sucked a few oz's out and pushed the fruit back down into the beer, hoping to make enough room so this doesn't happen again. I have a feeling I might need to poke the berries back down again in a few days.

yup, in mead making this is known as punching down the cap. CO2 builds up under the fruit and pushes it up. you need to knock it back down and release the CO2.

Do I risk oxygenation by having to do this often? Would swirling the jar a bit be a safer option?

I've got a batch which I pitched with stepped up Bam Biere dregs.

The bottle I'm pretty confident was quite fresh, I'm not far from Dexter, MI and my local grocery carries it from time to time (I say time to time since it sells out relatively fast when they have it stocked) so I'm assuming it's usually pretty fresh.

I threw the dregs into a pint jar of starter wort and let them sit a month or so, actually got a kombachu like scoby forming on the top of that (it was covered with foil but had basically free oxygen exchange with the outside).

I did a 12 gallon batch with this recipe:


Long low temperature mash is a key part of JP's process I feel, it ensures the wort is very fermentable and allows these beers to be bottled fresher because the bugs and the yeast have easily eaten up all the available sugars. Regular Bam Biere uses Crystal, but I had a bunch of Michigan Hull Melon and decided to use that instead. I haven't dry hopped it but might toss .25 oz of hops into the keg when it is ready to go in the kegerator.

I pitched a large starter of WLP-510 Bastogne Belgian Ale Yeast and my whole pint jar of stepped up Jolly Pumpkin Dregs including the kombachu scoby looking thing. I ferment in 15 gallon food grade plastic barrels, but during the summer I have some fruit fly issues so to avoid them getting into the wort I covered the top with a cloth strapped to the top of the bucket. This lets it get free exchange of oxygen and ferment 'openly' for the first few days which I think helps to simulate JP's process without allowing for additional uncontrolled inoculation. After about 4 days as activity started to die down I put a regular cover and airlock on it and let it ride.

Brewed it on 6/13/2015. I tasted it about a week ago and kegged it up. I'm super happy with it, turned around in under three months and already has a great character both in the aroma and the taste that reminds me of Jolly Pumpkin's fresher beers like Bam Biere. It's naturally carbonating in the kegs now, can't wait to get it on tap.

Admittedly my turn around on this beer is fast, I'm not sure if I was bottling if I would do it already, but I feel completely safe putting it into a keg with a bit of priming sugar. Never heard of a keg bomb.

I highly recommend anyone who wants to try a fast turn around sour to give it a try with a low mash temperature and JP Dregs. I'm super excited about how this one turned out and already planning another batch, I saved a pint of dregs out of that last batch, even found what was left of the floating scoby that formed. Next time might something darker like Bam Noire.

Cracked into the first bottle today. Good carbonation, head drops pretty quick. Very tart, a bit of cherry like Brett character didn't pick up before. Earthy and fruity. A bit of cheerio character that will hopefully drop out soon.

I love Jolly Pumpkin, but it has become very difficult to find around here in the past two years, as it seems they do not distribute out this ways anymore. I have added dregs to batches of lambic with great success. A month ago I enjoyed a 4 year old bottle of Bam Noire.

ffaoe said:

I love Jolly Pumpkin, but it has become very difficult to find around here in the past two years, as it seems they do not distribute out this ways anymore. I have added dregs to batches of lambic with great success. A month ago I enjoyed a 4 year old bottle of Bam Noire.

Click to expand...

I see your in SJ, I am originally from Voorhees. Try out PA. i remember getting it at a few bottle shops in philly. Pretty sure most Wegmens too, atleast on the PA side.

Thanks. I've found it a few places in PA, but it is nowhere to be found in south jersey anymore.