Bacteria Starters

I'm going to make a starter for the Rosalere blend for a Rodenbach clone. I've some places that to much O2 is not good for a the bacteria in this blend. Should I put O2 in the starter or not?

sause said:

I'm going to make a starter for the Rosalere blend for a Rodenbach clone. I've some places that to much O2 is not good for a the bacteria in this blend. Should I put O2 in the starter or not?

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I asked the powers that be, should have an answer soon(maybe tomorrow). The concern( I think), as you stated, is that Pedio doesn't like O2 but the rest do.

This is a timely question for me. We're doing a 60 gallon batch of Flanders. Everyone will ferment their 5 gallon shares in carboys with WLP001 as per Jamil's recipe and then we'll rack to oak barrel and pitch the rosalere blend. Instead of pitching like 3-4 viles, I was thinking that may one member should use a single vial of roselare as their entire ferment in essence making a 5 gallon bug starter. This should work right?

Personally I don't do bacteria starters, don't think they are necessary. The brett and other bacteria take a long time to grow anyway. If you give brett a lot of oxygen it will behave very differently, like an all brett beer, it becomes like a regular yeast that gives the beer some different phenols, esters and sourness. Too much oxygen can favor one bacteria over another and make the beer unbalanced.

Well yeah, but how much would you pitch in 60 gallons?

I agree with Iordz; for a 5 gallon batch, I wouldn't make a bacteria starter. I'm going to make a Berlineer weisse tomorrow with Lacto (my LHBS ordered the wrong strain) and I don't plan on using a starter at all. Pedio/Lacto will breakdown alcohol to form lactic acid (the 'sour' of sour beers), so they can't even begin to work until the yeast has started fermentation. How do you plan on making a starter for 60 gallons, with an agar plate, grabbing the cultures and growing them from there?

Bobby, I think if one of the brewers pitched the blend in the 5gal batch and then pitched that into the 60gal it would work. The thing is you would really have to give that carboy a long time to propagate the yeast. I think if you pitched a pack or two or Roeselare it would work. Since your club is brewing a large volume, it might take the beer longer to mature because less oxygen will be diffused and the bacteria will be working even slower than a regular 5gal batch. In the presence of pediococcus, brettanomyces grows slower but ferments very dry. The good thing is that when the bacteria and yeast work slow the end product will probably exhibit subtle complexities. This is the main reason that Boon favors his Foundre.

avidhomebrewer said:

Pedio/Lacto will breakdown alcohol to form lactic acid (the 'sour' of sour beers), so they can't even begin to work until the yeast has started fermentation.

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First off that is wrong comma Lacto metabolizes glucose to form lactic acid. Second of all this blend is going to be the only pitching in the beer. It has yeast and bugs in it. The pack I have is quite old so I want to do a starter to make sure it's viable also I want to make enough of this yeast to save some for later since this was a VSS.

On further note BYO suggests making a starter even for a Beliner Weisse(as you can see in my sig I've already done two) I did not make one for them but it as been suggested by a pretty reliable source. I'm still thinking of making a starter with out aerating it but it would be nice to see what the yeast will do.

If you want to make a starter, go for it and see what happens. I'm sure it would work out, just let us know how it turns out. My LHBS gave me a Roeselare pack that was packaged by Wyeast during July 2006! It was free, so I took it and I am going to smack it to determine whether it is viable or not. I have faith it will work, but if it doesn't I might try a starter.

I'm going to try this out with this blend. Here

Here you go sause:

http://www.babblebelt.com/newboard/thread.html?tid=1108752780&th=1197077539&pg=1&tpg=1&add=1

I don't remember why you want to use it for primary fermentation, but if you 'have to' then maybe a starter is a good idea to get the 1056(or whatever) good and viable, and to do this w/o aeration. However, I'd just use 1056/001/whatever clean yeast to do the primary, and then pitch the Roeselare into secondary as is, it seemed to be fine for these^ guys). Good luck.