Help maintaining "house" culture

[gregkeller]

So i've brewed a few sour beers and they've come out really tasty. I basically brew a pretty simple base beer, pitch a decent pitch of a brewers yeast strain (I've used us-05, wlp530, wlp002, and a few others) and at the same time pitch sour dregs from bottles. I will add more dregs as I drink sour beers for the first 3-4 months, but then just let it go till i'm ready to drink it. One thing i'd really like to be able to do is have a 'house' culture ready to go for all my sour brewing needs, and I'm wondering what the best way to do this would be.

Would this work?
-fill a 1 gallon jug with ~.5 gallons of 1.030-.040 wort and a couple of ounces of medium french oak cubes.
-pitch a ton of sour beer dregs into it and let it go.
-keep that jug in a dark corner of my brewing space, adding dregs to it as I drink them.

When ready to brew I fish out some oak cubes and add them to my fermenter along with a saccharomyces pitch and let it go. When that beer is done i fish the cubes out and put back into my "mother"

I'm just wondering if this is a good, sustainable idea? I kind of want to always have sour beers going, and could probably pitch onto my secondary cake, but also realize that life and 2 kids can get in the way of my brewing plans , so thought this might be a good way to have a kind of always pitchable culture going that slowly builds up diversity as I add dregs to it.

If you think this is a good idea, how long do you think I could keep that "mother" going? is a dark corner of my basement the best place to store it? or would my fridge be better? My basement varies from 60 degrees in the dead of winter to 78-80 in the heat of winter.

 

[chefchris]

I keep a ton of yeast/bugs around in 1 gal jugs and quart mason jars. I don't have any oak in mine, I just swirl it up and pitch some in. Then top up with fresh wort. I keep them all out at room temp but they can also be stored in the fridge, it's just not ideal for brett. Once initial fermentation dies down I put a bung and airlock on it. As long as you top up every now and then with some fresh wort and keep air out you should be able to keep it going for years.

 

[gregkeller]

Do you keep each sample separate and then mix when you pitch? In my head I've got a single gallon jug with my house culture that has dregs from every sour beer I've drank with harvestable dregs. I realize it would probably be better to have a jar with jolly pumpkin in it, another with Russian river, allagash, etc. then again all those are mixed cultures anyway.

 

[Calder]

I have a few sour cultures. I keep them in 1.5 liter wine bottles with airlocks.

When I use one, I pitch it all in the wort. If it needs yeast, I pitch east after 3 to 4 days. As fermentation slows (but not finished), I refill the sanitized bottle from the full batch, put on airlock, and store In basement.

 

[chefchris]

Do you keep each sample separate and then mix when you pitch? In my head I've got a single gallon jug with my house culture that has dregs from every sour beer I've drank with harvestable dregs. I realize it would probably be better to have a jar with jolly pumpkin in it, another with Russian river, allagash, etc. then again all those are mixed cultures anyway.

Yes everything is separate, that way I can dose as I want. Nothing wrong with throwing all the dregs in one container, though.

 

[TAK]

I keep them all out at room temp but they can also be stored in the fridge, it's just not ideal for brett.

This is a point I've wondered about. I've ran across what seem to be some conflicting points by reputable resources.

I recall watching a video interview with Chad Y. where he stated that he found that his brett died after refrigeration.

In Michael T.'s book on sours, in the section about maintaining cultures, he says that refrigeration is good for mixed cultures (LAB + yeast) because at room temps the LAB is favored and will eventually dominate the mix.

Off topic to the OP, but to this point... If it's true that brett dies off during cold storage, I've wondered if I force carb a brett'd beer and then bottle some from the keg, if I'll loose any potential flavor profile development from continued celerring.

 

[BGBC]

I have a house culture going with a bunch of dregs. I don't have oak in it (it's in a growler), but I've pitched some of the slurry into beers. I've actually done primary with just the sour slurry, or you could add fresh sacch as well. I keep it at room temp.

I've fed it with extra wort from brew days a few times, every few months. Obviously the issue with this method is that the proportions and the resulting beers will change and vary over time, but that's kind of the beauty of it too, in my mind.

 

[Wes440]

Mine are much the same as others have described above. I'll just need to keep "feeding" the cultures and sample sparingly to keep them in optimal condition.

Some have been going for 3-4 months and have really developed nicely - I am almost ready to pour 3/4 out to bottle and refill with new wort. I would definitely prefer to brew a couple of gallons of lightly hopped base beer, as opposed to just using DME starter wort if replacing more than half of the volume, but that's just me. I like to view them as small batches of sour beer, which they technically are... But I guess DME starter wort is the easiest, probably the best way to just top it up a bit to feed.