A few pre brew rookie questions

Im getting ready to start brewing a basic wild beer. I will be doing 2 sanke kegs on an annual sour brew day for the foreseeable future. I was going to begin by making a starter from some of my favourite bottle dregs and mix those with some ecy bug farm. I was going to put 3 oz of pre boiled oak cubes in the starter, reserve these when I pitch and rinse dry and store for the next annual starter. I had also planned to use 3 oz of pre boiled oak cubes per keg for aging.

So the questions i have are:
-Do I use bug farm for primary and secondary fermentation?
-do you rack to different fermenters for primer and secondary?
-Should i pitch another yeast to start, and bug farm after vigorus fermentation?
-has anyone made a starter with oak cubes? just wondering if I might be better to make a 2x starter and store half in the fridge for next year?

Any other help suggestions is appreciated.

dye4me said:

-Do I use bug farm for primary and secondary fermentation?

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bug farm has everything you need for both primary and secondary. adding dregs is fine, could add more complexity, but isn't needed.

dye4me said:

-do you rack to different fermenters for primer and secondary?

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both methods are used. personally i rack to secondary and fill it all the way up to the neck to keep head-space to an absolute minimum. others keep it in primary, with a lot of head-space, for a year or more. you call.

dye4me said:

-Should i pitch another yeast to start, and bug farm after vigorus fermentation?

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you can, if you want the contribution of that primary yeast. but it's not needed, BF has more than enough sacch & brett to take care of fermentation.

dye4me said:

-has anyone made a starter with oak cubes? just wondering if I might be better to make a 2x starter and store half in the fridge for next year?

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i have no experience using oak cubes, but pretty sure that this isn't the best way of maintaining the bugs. during storage, i would be afraid about exposing the wood to air and how to feed it. only brett (and then, i believe it's only certain bretts) can live off the wood. everything else will starve.

instead, get yourself a #2 stopper and an air-lock, and use a standard 12 or 22 oz beer bottle. add a little Bug Farm in there, top up with some dextrinous wort (add malto-dextrine, flour, etc) and get a mini-fermentation going in there. every few months, pour out some of the spent wort/beer and top with with some fresh wort. if you want to use some of the bugs, shake up bottle, pour out some of the beer & bugs, and then top up.