Pellicle lag time?

Hi, I grew a starter of Jolly Pumpkin and Bockor dregs for about a week on my stirplate and pitched them into a carboy full of spontaneously fermented ale about four weeks ago. The starter was 1.3L of 1.030 wort, my beer was 1.063, mashed at 160F to get a lot of dextrines, and had about 37 IBUs. The stontaneous yeast grouch it down to 1.025.

Shortly after pitching the starter fermentation started again and continued for a while. I don't know the current SG but will check this weekend.

My question is, after about four weeks of sitting on the dregs, I expected something of a pellicle to have formed. How long do you typically wait for a pellicle to form when using Jolly Pumpkin dregs? Is the higher IBUs impeding the pellicle formation?

Thanks in advance!

You may not get a pellicle and that's fine. You get it when it's exposed to oxygen. I've had some take months before one formed and others where one never forms and they all turned out great

That's reassuring to hear. I was getting antsy after seeing all the success some have had with the JP dregs. I'm going to take a sample this weekend to see if the dregs were able to bring the OG down a bit, and hopefully there'll be some Brett character in it at that time.

Thanks for the reply!

what bocker beer did you use? i've tried bellegams and jacobin and haven't had any luck with them- but the JP works great. Like was said - it's good advice to not worry about your pellicle.

spearko520 said:

what bocker beer did you use? i've tried bellegams and jacobin and haven't had any luck with them- but the JP works great. Like was said - it's good advice to not worry about your pellicle.

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I tried the Bockor Bellegems Bruin. I already had the JP Calabaza Blanca dregs in the starter, so I swirled (or at least tried swirling) the dregs off the bottom of the Bockor bottle and then poured that into starter. My guess is the bottle had been pretty old since even after a half hour of fairly intensive swirling the bottom of the bottle was still coated with sediment. Oh well. The beer was great and maybe some of the bugs in the Bruin made it into the starter.

I'm really looking forward to trying the sample. Just after the spontaneous fermentation, the beer was slightly tart, spritzy, and definitely had a wild aroma/flavor to it. I couldn't tell if that was from the hops, but regardless, it was interesting. Can't wait to see what the dregs have done to it.