Crooked stave St. Bretta dregs

Has anyone had success in harvesting and brewing with dregs from Crooked Stave St. Bretta bottles or dregs from any of the other Crooked Stave bottles?

i have had great success harvesting from their 'hop savant"

I harvested the dregs a friend gave me. I haven't used them yet, though. Just made a low gravity starter in a pint jar and let it go for a week or so. It's in my fridge currently.

I harvested and used some dregs from Surette, along with some dregs from Jolly Pumpkin Oro de Calabaza in a brown ale now sitting in a used 20L whiskey barrel. I got alot of Surette aroma when I transferred from primary to secondary.

Thanks for the replies guys. I managed to grow dregs from a bottle of st. Bretta.
What the beer will taste like remains to be seen. Currently aging in Chardonnay barrel.

I harvested dregs from a bottle of St. Bretta last weekend. I flamed the bottle and poured into a 2/3 full pint jar with 1.025 wort that I sterilized in my pressure canner. I threw in a stir bar and left it on a stir plate for a couple days. I didn't see much action the first couple days, but I noticed some leakage around the top so I assumed something had happened. I pulled it off the stir plate a couple of days ago to use my stir plate for another beer.

I was preparing to step it up today after a week. I swirled it around to re-suspend all the yeast and trub on the bottom and it foamed up crazy and I barely got the lid bag down before I had a huge mess. It had a hige funky brett smell that was pretty similar to St. Bretta. Based on this info I believe the Brett has been chugging along nicely. I am excited to see what happens in the next week or so after this starter is finished.

Phil

I harvested dregs from st bretta and brewed up a wit, kegged 2 gals of it after 6 weeks and it smells like wet rags and a wet mutt. Tasted dirty, but I dry hooped more tangelo zest and the smell is getting better. Crossing my fingers. I'm thinking they used wit yeast, the secondary fermentation with Brett, cause it doesn't taste close

Oh, I harvested dregs from surette provisions and love it. Will use again for sure

I'm digging up a old thread here but I just harvested the dregs from a bottle of st. bretta. I dumped the bottle in 12oz's of starter .1030 started it took off pretty quickly. I just jumped it up to about 2ltrs.

I pitched the dregs of a few crooked stave beers into a saison secondary (fermented with belle saison) and it turned out amazing. Probably the best saison I've ever made.

Clef051 said:

I'm digging up a old thread here but I just harvested the dregs from a bottle of st. bretta. I dumped the bottle in 12oz's of starter .1030 started it took off pretty quickly. I just jumped it up to about 2ltrs.

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I've got some St. Bretta dregs that I'm trying to culture up, but it really doesn't have any noticeable activity yet. I've definitely got a yogurt-like scent from the wort, but really just some trub along the bottom. I've got it in a bomber with an airlock for about a week now...

I first pitched the bottle dregs into a glass erlenmeyer flask with about 500 ml or so, and didn't see any activity there either.... no krausen or anything. It just soured the wort over a period of 2 weeks, and more of the yogurt-like smell. It also thickened the consistency of the wort quite a bit, made it slime-like. I decanted most of that off before stepping those dregs (which seemed to increase along the bottom - a white colored slurry) into the bomber it's in now. While decanting it, I tasted some of the wort and it was very citric sour! But I didn't see any decrease in the gravity of the wort at that time - which is what has got me so confused.

Was this at all what you were getting from your experience? The wort wouldn't sour on it's own like this would it?
I've never left unfermented or unhitched wort out to age so I wouldn't know what that would smell or taste like....

Wes440 said:

. It also thickened the consistency of the wort quite a bit, made it slime-like.....

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Sounds like pedio.

Anyone have any updates on the St. bretta dregs for a brew. I cultured mine last night.

Over the last year or so, I've farmed a lot of CS dregs into a collective culture. Not just St. Bretta, so I can't comment there from personal experience. I think some St. Bretta is truly 100% Brett, but I think that's the older stuff (maybe circa the OP). Now, I believe St. Bretta sees a primary Brett fermentation, but then it hits barrels/foeders, and so it pics up th house LAB at that point.

Anyway, I just pitched my CS culture into its first 8 gal batch. So, we'll see how that goes. As I've maintained the culture, I drink what I draw off when I re-feed, and it sours a quart quickly and nicely.

Curios to hear anyone else's experience with CS dregs.

my longest-running sour culture is all CS dregs. vieille and surette, i believe. it contains something - i believe lacto, but maybe it's pedio - that will sour just about anything. if something has been aging for a year and hasn't soured sufficiently, a few squirts of this stuff will take care of it. really powerful stuff. it's a bit one-dimensional, in that it takes over anything it's thrown in to and i can recognize this bug mix just by smelling it, but it's a nice singular dimension. it really reminds me of a JP culture.