Bacteria Alcohol Tolerance

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worlddivides

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I did a ton of searches for this and, while I could find info on Brett, I couldn't find any definitive info on Lactobacillus and Pediococcus.

It seems that Brett tends to have alcohol tolerances that range from 10% to 18% (with a few less common strains being below 10%), but I couldn't find any info whatsoever on Pediococcus. A lot of places "anecdotally" said that Lactobacillus has a really low alcohol tolerance (some even giving ABVs as laughably low as 3% or 4%), but I find that incredibly unlikely since there are commercial sour beers at 8%, 9%, 10%, and even higher that use Lactobacillus in the souring process.

So, I was wondering if anyone has any info on the alcohol tolerances of Pediococcus and any "real" alcohol tolerances for Lactobacillus.
 
A lot of places "anecdotally" said that Lactobacillus has a really low alcohol tolerance (some even giving ABVs as laughably low as 3% or 4%), but I find that incredibly unlikely since there are commercial sour beers at 8%, 9%, 10%, and even higher that use Lactobacillus in the souring process.
Of course, they could be souring prior to primary fermentation...
 
Depends on the strain of lacto, look at Bourbon County this year. It's double digit abv and picked up a rare lacto strain that was able to grow in the bottles.
 
Of course, they could be souring prior to primary fermentation...

I assume you mean sour mashing/kettle souring/wort souring. I would imagine that could be true of styles like Berliner Weisse for certain breweries, but I seriously doubt respected breweries like Russian River or The Bruery are using such methods on more traditional Belgian-style sours (Flemish reds, Lambics, etc.).

Depends on the strain of lacto, look at Bourbon County this year. It's double digit abv and picked up a rare lacto strain that was able to grow in the bottles.

Wow. I hadn't heard about that.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/dinin...nted-beer-recall-bacteria-20160526-story.html

Intriguing.
 
It would be kinda cool to see them make an intentional sour with this strain. A lacto strain with that high of an alcohol tolerance could be interesting
 
It would be kinda cool to see them make an intentional sour with this strain. A lacto strain with that high of an alcohol tolerance could be interesting

I'd seen on so many websites that most strains of Lactobacillus have a really low alcohol tolerance, so the idea that there's one that can work in a high IBU and high alcohol environment is fascinating. I'd love to see them take advantage of those barrels (assuming that's how the lacto was introduced) and make a high alcohol sour with strong lacto activity. Although I'm a huge fan of sours in general, I've always preferred Lactobacillus over Pediococcus (but I believe Pediococcus is the one with much higher IBU and alcohol tolerance).
 
Pedio can withstand higher IBU, but not sure about the alcohol tolerance. I can tell you with testing so far my house sour blend can handle up to 20 or so IBU and still get nice and sour (in fact I plan on making a batch that's 20-25 to tame it down a bit). And I've made beers that are 6-7% ABV without any issues (even did a secondary fermentation with sour dregs on a 6% saison that got nice and sour).

The weirdest thing I have is a 2 year old barleywine that I was trying to funkify in secondary. I added brett two separate times to try to get it going faster (first time I just pitched in the vial, second time I made a starter that went up to 8% ABV). It's at around 12% ABV, has somewhere on the order of 40 IBU (or did 2 years ago). It has gotten sour somehow. It's actually a very pleasant sour too. After much internal debate I pitched dregs off of a BFM Saint Bon Chien into it, then added some high ABV yeast to get it down as far as possible. I'm giving it another month before bottling. In fact, the BFM SBC reminded me a lot of it (might add some more red wine oak or maybe rum oak).
 
but I find that incredibly unlikely since there are commercial sour beers at 8%, 9%, 10%, and even higher that use Lactobacillus in the souring process.
those beers contain both lacto and pedio. so the lacto might peter out around 5% (or whatever it's tolerance is) while the pedio soldiers on... and there is a ton of variability. whatever bugs Cascade is using are clearly alcohol tolerant. i'm pretty sure it's a lacto.

So, I was wondering if anyone has any info on the alcohol tolerances of Pediococcus and any "real" alcohol tolerances for Lactobacillus.
any number for pedio or lacto is going to be a range.

"lacto" is a genus, so first you need to specify a species (brevis, delbrueckii, plantarum, etc.), and within each of these there are strains... so any one number isn't going to apply to all lacto.

when we talk about pedio (a genus), we're typically talking about P. damnosus.

so an equivalent question would be "what is the alcohol tolerance of sacch"... which can be from very low for some wild sacchs to over 20%. so any statement like "sacch is tolerant from 7% to 15%" isn't wrong... but it doesn't cover everything.
 
Right, but I've seen tons of info saying that Brett is tolerant from 8% to 18% depending on the strain or species, just like you'll see that Sacch is tolerant from 7% to 20%. But almost everything I'd seen about Lacto didn't even give a range or any specific strains. It generally just gave a very low number of 3% or 4% and no more. Pediococcus, on the other hand, I haven't been able to find any info about alcohol tolerances whatsoever for any of the strains so I can't even tell what the alcohol tolerances are for any strains of Pedio, regardless of whether it's one I'm using or not.

I just found it kind of odd since the alcohol tolerance for every strain of Sacch is pretty detailed and specific (and that seems to be pretty much the same for Brett as well).
 

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