First hand Experiences with Pedio

[WhamFish]

Lambic Brewers,
I've read most of the available literature about brewing with pedio, I'm familiar with most of the common discussion points:

-can make beer ropey with ectopolysaccharides - Brett makes this better
-Makes a bunch of diacetyl and never cleans it up - Brett also makes this better
-Lowers pH past the levels of Lacto alone and seems to work well after primary fermentation has ended

I'm interested in comments from those of you that have actually purchased a pack from Wyeast and used it.

Did you experience exactly these things?

Has anyone ever pitched it pre-primary as you might with Lacto to sour wort? If so what happened?

If the wort has fermented out to 1.003 do you think pitching pedio will have any activity? Make it sick and still sour, or do you need more sugars?

 

[WhamFish]

I forgot to explain my motivation in asking, which might help.

I'm planning on making a very fermentable wort, like OG:1.048 that has been mashed at 148F for 120min with at least 0.5Lbs of table sugar. Which I would expect to finish at 1.003-4 with my usual saison yeast. The plan is to add both L. brevis and Pedio prior to primary fermentation and hold around 100 for 3-4 days. Drop the temp to 64 and pitch my Saison yeast and Brett mix and then slowly ramp up to 85 as fermentation progresses.

My hope is that the negative effects of Pedio will mostly occur in that first 3-4 days where it is establishing itself with the Lacto. This primary fermentation protocol typically gets me down to 1.004 with the Sach alone as I said, I'd expect to get to that FG or lower with this mixed culture approach in around 2 weeks. So thats where I'm kind of curious to get peoples thoughts/experiences.

I know people see ropey/diacytle phase in the bottle but thats because they add priming sugars and I know that people get it when they add Pedio post primary but thats because they've left a bunch of dextrine or even starch.The whole ropey and or diacytle phase occurs as the Pedio grows right? If theres not a lot of sugars around will it necessarily go through another sick phase or is it possible to limit this by having the FG finish super low?

I'm going to go ahead and do this just to see what happens and I'll report back here but I'd appreciate any comments from others that have used the Pedio Wyeast pack or any insights into the questions above. Cheers

 

[sweetcell]

i definitely look forward to hearing about your experience/experiment.

if you're at 1.003, there is still something for pedio to eat. it can ferment long chain sugars, i *believe* even longer than brett's 9-chain limit. so there is still a chance, IMO, that the pedio does its thing after primary.

 

[mnick12]

I am interested as well.

Twice I have tried to make starter from pediococcus using DME or apple juice, and both times I have seen no evidence of microbial activity. Now both of the packets I used were over two months old, but I would like to know if 12$ of cells I pitch into my beers is even doing anything.

Now that I have a scope and some differential media I should be able to find out for sure.

Also WhamFish, if you are going to pitch pediococcus I would not keep the temp at 100F. IIRC pediococcus Damnosus grows best around 72F, at 100F you will kill it.

 

[feinbera]

Still in the "read the literature" stage myself, but, far as I understand, pedio is slow – it'll get you farther than lacto, but you've gotta give it time to work its magic (and time for the brett to slowly chew through the byproducts).

I'd certainly love to be proven wrong on this point, however – it's been something of a dream of mine to be able to turn around a good, tart, complex beer in a month or two, but it's been hard to see how I might actually be able to pull it off with lacto only souring so much and pedio taking its sweet time.

Also, I chuckled about "ectopolysaccharides" – you get so excited about the Ghostbusters reboot you had to go and brew a Slimer-brau?

 

[WhamFish]

Cool, well I have a pack on the way. I'll attempt this next week.

My goal is to make an awesome sour with a short turn around as well. I'm getting pretty good results presently. I scored a 36 in a recent comp with a beer that was only 4 months from brew day. I do think it could get better though. Pedio seems like a promising way to get the beer very sour, just hope I can figure out how to not add on additional process time.

 

[TAK]

Interested in your results.