Logistics of saving dregs from bottle share to build culture

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TravelingLight

TravelingLight

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So I'm trying to figure out the best way to accomplish this, logistically.

I've been wanting to start saving bottle dregs from sours/wilds and building my own culture to have at all times so I can pitch into one gallon small batches when I pull a gallon from other beers I'm brewing.

I've got plenty of bottles in my "cellar" with viable dregs. But, my brother's bachelor party is coming up soon. A small gathering of a lot of hardcore beer nerds. At least one of us is a pretty big trader and I have no doubt will bring some whales to the bachelor party. I don't want these dregs to go to waste.

It'll just be for a weekend and it's only about 2.5 hours away from my house. What's my best course of action?

Should I just seal the bottles with sanitized foil with the dregs in the bottom and wait until I get home to dump them into some low gravity wort? OR...

Should I make some wort to take with me and dump the dregs in the starter as we drink them then just bring the flask home with the starter and all the dregs?

Finally, regardless of whether I bring the dregs home and pitch or take wort with me and pitch, is there any problem with this plan? Meaning, brew up some wort and continuously add dregs to it when I drink a viable bottle, and top up with fresh wort every few months or so?
 
Ideally? I'd bring a 32oz flip top growler half-filled with low OG wort and a spray bottle of starsan. Just periodically dump stuff in there and seal it back up
 
m00ps said:
Ideally? I'd bring a 32oz flip top growler half-filled with low OG wort and a spray bottle of starsan. Just periodically dump stuff in there and seal it back up
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Thanks m00ps. Was hoping you would chime in. No airlock, eh? Also, any reason why you specified flip top grower? I ask because I've got a few half-growlers as I call them, but they have screw tops.
 
Are you going to save the yeast in separate bottles? Or add to it randomly?

You can culture up with dregs from one bottle, no need to save for months. In fact, I am not understanding your method. Have you cultured yeast from bottled before?
 
ericbw said:
Are you going to save the yeast in separate bottles? Or add to it randomly?

You can culture up with dregs from one bottle, no need to save for months. In fact, I am not understanding your method. Have you cultured yeast from bottled before?
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Not separate bottles, unless I wanted to save a particular bottle's dregs by itself.

Negative, I have not cultured before. What I am saying is this: I'll be with a group of guys in a few weeks opening some good bottles (sours/wilds), many with viable dregs (i.e., bugs/bacteria). I want to save these dregs and continue to feed them in order to inoculate future sour beers with, mostly one gallon small batch experiments.

So, for example, say we open Bottles X, Y, and Z, and all three of those have viable brett and bacteria, I want to dump the dregs from all three of those bottles into a low gravity wort to bring home, feed, grow, and use in future beers.

Am I off base here?
 
TravelingLight said:
Thanks m00ps. Was hoping you would chime in. No airlock, eh? Also, any reason why you specified flip top grower? I ask because I've got a few half-growlers as I call them, but they have screw tops.
Click to expand...

screw top would work too. I guess my reasoning was that all the 32oz growlers I have are the big flip top ones. I only have 64oz screw offs and I figured youd want a smaller growler.

I doubt youd need an airlock until it gets going for a few days. I dont think its gonna take off like a rocket. Plus, you can always unscrew the cap a bit to see if any co2 has buiilt up yet
 
m00ps said:
screw top would work too. I guess my reasoning was that all the 32oz growlers I have are the big flip top ones. I only have 64oz screw offs and I figured youd want a smaller growler.

I doubt youd need an airlock until it gets going for a few days. I dont think its gonna take off like a rocket. Plus, you can always unscrew the cap a bit to see if any co2 has buiilt up yet
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Ahh perfect. Thanks again brother. I can do that and just toss an airlock on when I get home.
 
I use pint Mason jars for initial dregs growing. Maybe pack up six of them sanitized and 3/4 full of low gravity wort. Then you could save bottle dregs individually or at least be more selective.
 
WI_Wino said:
I use pint Mason jars for initial dregs growing. Maybe pack up six of them sanitized and 3/4 full of low gravity wort. Then you could save bottle dregs individually or at least be more selective.
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Good idea. I'm leaning more towards this. Just brew up some wort and split between a six pack of mason jars. What about the lid? I've seen people mention putting lids on upside down? Makes sense since it wouldn't seal it air tight. Do you do this? Thanks.
 
TravelingLight said:
...I want to dump the dregs from all three of those bottles into a low gravity wort to bring home, feed, grow, and use in future beers.

Am I off base here?
Click to expand...

No you aren't, have done it twice, also with one gallon experiments. Once with a complete mishmash of sours, a second time with a collection consisting of various Hill Farmstead dregs.

The mishmash took a while to ramp up, but after a few days got the funky stink, then a couple weeks later it got the ropy pellicle, etc. It's been in the bucket for four months, still haven't decided if I want to add anything like fruit, oak, etc going to wait another few months, see where it's at. Nice mild stink going on.

The Hill Farmstead thing went nasty within 48 hours. It smelled positively ghastly, like moldy sweat socks dipped in standing water and then left in a sealed automobile in the bright sunshine. Horrible. I was going to dump it and I thought, what the heck, let it ride. Well glad I did, after about 2-3 weeks the funk found its way and now it has a nice sour nose, I'm pleasantly surprised.

As for the collection, it was about half at home and half while traveling. I would simply say, "hey I want to save the dregs" and my friends would pour accordingly. Then I'd put some clean saran wrap over the bottle, cinch it down with a rubber band, and put the bottle in my cooler. When I got home I just poured the contents into the appropriate mason jar for the type. Now I have to say the Hill Farmstead was during the winter ski season, so I wasn't quite as concerned about spoilage.

Hey maybe I got some other bugs in there, but so far so good.
 
TravelingLight said:
Good idea. I'm leaning more towards this. Just brew up some wort and split between a six pack of mason jars. What about the lid? I've seen people mention putting lids on upside down? Makes sense since it wouldn't seal it air tight. Do you do this? Thanks.
Click to expand...

I put the lids on normally and left them tight but not air tight. For transport I would screw them then vent when I got home.
 
SunnyDownSnuff said:
No you aren't, have done it twice, also with one gallon experiments. Once with a complete mishmash of sours, a second time with a collection consisting of various Hill Farmstead dregs.

The mishmash took a while to ramp up, but after a few days got the funky stink, then a couple weeks later it got the ropy pellicle, etc. It's been in the bucket for four months, still haven't decided if I want to add anything like fruit, oak, etc going to wait another few months, see where it's at. Nice mild stink going on.

The Hill Farmstead thing went nasty within 48 hours. It smelled positively ghastly, like moldy sweat socks dipped in standing water and then left in a sealed automobile in the bright sunshine. Horrible. I was going to dump it and I thought, what the heck, let it ride. Well glad I did, after about 2-3 weeks the funk found its way and now it has a nice sour nose, I'm pleasantly surprised.

As for the collection, it was about half at home and half while traveling. I would simply say, "hey I want to save the dregs" and my friends would pour accordingly. Then I'd put some clean saran wrap over the bottle, cinch it down with a rubber band, and put the bottle in my cooler. When I got home I just poured the contents into the appropriate mason jar for the type. Now I have to say the Hill Farmstead was during the winter ski season, so I wasn't quite as concerned about spoilage.

Hey maybe I got some other bugs in there, but so far so good.
Click to expand...
That's some excellent advice. I hadn't thought of doing it that way. If I did it that way, I wouldn't have to travel with wort, i.e., one less thing to worry about preparing and packing in the car. I think I'm going to do it this way. I'll just take my spray bottle of star san, some foil squares, and some rubber bands. Thanks! Interested to see how your small batch funky experiments turn out!

WI_Wino said:
I put the lids on normally and left them tight but not air tight. For transport I would screw them then vent when I got home.
Click to expand...
Excellent. I'll definitely do this if I don't go the route above. Thanks.
 
I'll be curious to see a list of whatever beers are brought to the party.

ISO - Hard to get farmhouse yeast cultures / FT: lots of beer
 
m00ps said:
I'll be curious to see a list of whatever beers are brought to the party.

ISO - Hard to get farmhouse yeast cultures / FT: lots of beer
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Ha! I'll be happy to report back with anything notable. I know I've got two RRs in the cellar I'm taking (Supplication and...maybe Sanctification?) and plenty of Wicked Weeds (and we'll be in Asheville, so we'll get some WW bottles from Funkatorium too). I've really been wanted to get a culture from a Wicked Weed bottle. I think we'll also have a partial vertical of Love Child (5, 6, and 7). Other than those, I know my big trading buddy will bring some whales, but probably more BA beers and stouts than buggy beers.
 
This is quite the beer nerd endeavor!! I think saving the dregs in the bottle is safest, with a little beer left to protect it.
 
ericbw said:
This is quite the beer nerd endeavor!! I think saving the dregs in the bottle is safest, with a little beer left to protect it.
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Right?! I love nerding out on beer. I'm still debating on what I'm going to do, i.e., just seal bottles and bring em home to dump in wort vs. taking wort in jars. It'll probably be a gametime decision.
 
WI_Wino said:
Another thought, centrifuge tubes. You can get them sterile in the packaging. Open up, dump in dregs, cap. Take home and plop some wort in there or pour dregs into mason jars/flasks/etc.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0018MQ9TK/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20
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Oh man, I like this idea even better. And would definitely cut down on crap I have to pack and carry. I think I am definitely going to go this route and I can label the tubes. Thanks for the heads up.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I ended up saving dregs in three separate tubes...

Tube 1: Russian River Consecration + RR Supplication
Tube 2: Jester King Provenance + JK RU55
Tube 3: Rare Barrel No Salt

Now I need to decide what to do with them. I know some is going into one gallon of my saison that's in primary now. But I need to figure out what to do to keep this stuff viable. Step up a starter?
 
Put each one in a small, low OG starter to help them propagate and get healthy. From there, you can probably either step up with stronger starter wort, pitch them, or harvest the whole starter for future use. They will be pretty hardy since itll be mostly bacteria and brett

I think I would get each going, then taste each to decide which to do with them. I got cultures of Jester King and Casey going that survived almost a year in the bottle and hot summer shipping
 
m00ps said:
Put each one in a small, low OG starter to help them propagate and get healthy. From there, you can probably either step up with stronger starter wort, pitch them, or harvest the whole starter for future use. They will be pretty hardy since itll be mostly bacteria and brett

I think I would get each going, then taste each to decide which to do with them. I got cultures of Jester King and Casey going that survived almost a year in the bottle and hot summer shipping
Click to expand...
Thanks m00ps. Excellent advice. I think I'm going to start stepping them all up. Then, based on how they do, I'll pitch one into the saison (but harvest some of that one) and harvest the rest for future use.

When saving these buggy cultures, do I need to do anything differently? Currently when I'm harvesting from a starter I pull off 500ml slurry, crash and decant, then add that slurry to a half pint jar with de-oxygenated and sanitized water, seal and store in the fridge. Same process for bugs? Thanks.
 
I just use the same process. They definitely last longer in the fridge in terms of viability than regular brewer's yeast.

Its all kind of a crapshoot when dealing with wild sour blends. There may be a bit of sacch in there now that will help it attenuate faster. But with later generations, low pH, and just age, it can get edged out by the bugs. So I wouldnt try using it by itself to entirely ferment a beer unless you periodically add some sort of sacch into the blend.

youll be able to tell from tasting the starter wort if it didnt fully ferment it though. They can also just sit on the yeast cakes in their starters at room temp too IME. I've left ones out for over a month, feeding it every now and then, until I was ready to pitch it into a secondary to start souring
 
m00ps said:
I just use the same process. They definitely last longer in the fridge in terms of viability than regular brewer's yeast.

Its all kind of a crapshoot when dealing with wild sour blends. There may be a bit of sacch in there now that will help it attenuate faster. But with later generations, low pH, and just age, it can get edged out by the bugs. So I wouldnt try using it by itself to entirely ferment a beer unless you periodically add some sort of sacch into the blend.

youll be able to tell from tasting the starter wort if it didnt fully ferment it though. They can also just sit on the yeast cakes in their starters at room temp too IME. I've left ones out for over a month, feeding it every now and then, until I was ready to pitch it into a secondary to start souring
Click to expand...
Thanks again. The saison I'm pitching into will be at two weeks on 3711. Then I'm racking on to raspberries, and will pull a gallon off then. So it'll already be fermented out with sacc, then getting some bugs.
 

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