Questions about cultured yeast from lambic

[eman_resu]

I'm attempting to grow a culture from two bottles of Timmermans Lambicus Blanche. I'm just not sure if the starter is ok, as I don't know what it's supposed to look like. Pics are not very good, but what do you think?

I started it five or six weeks ago with about 200 ml of ~1.020 wort and the dregs from one bottle. Around two weeks later I poured the whole thing into a wine bottle with another ~200 ml of wort and the dregs from another bottle. It seemed to ferment out and cleared, and at some point I found this:

First I thought it was mold, but wasn't sure what to do so I just left it there in the closet and forgot about it. A few days ago I discovered the pellicle in the pics. Are moldy looking spots like that normal?

I had planned to chill, decant and pitch into a bigger starter, but with the pellicle I'm not sure how it would work? If you think the starter looks ok, what should I do next? Start a batch with neutral ale yeast and later pitch my lambic starter into it? Or...?

 

[m00ps]

The pellicle looks normal but that moldy looking thing worries me. Whats it smell like?
I'd pitch the lambi starter with your sacch strain to hopefully get it moving along faster

 

[ColoHox]

Most of the molds that can grow in/on beer have a pretty distinctive moldy smell. Give that thing a whiff. Anything green and fuzzy is mold, and should be tossed.

 

[eman_resu]

I'm not picking up anything moldy about the smell. Smells like a lambic to me.

The liquid itself never looked suspicious, so maybe I could figure out a way to transfer the starter to another container without it touching the spot on the side. Give it a small amount of stronger wort to chew on and see what happens?

How much, if any, do you need to grow a culture to use it (along with "normal" ale yeast) in a batch without a commercial one?

 

[m00ps]

Well you can easily make a sour by directly pitching the dregs of 3 or 4 beers into a finished clean ale. It will just take longer for the bugs to do their stuff. If you get a decent sized starter (i usually do 600-800ml for blended sours) you will get sour character much quicker

 

[eman_resu]

Thanks guys. I'll see if it turns out usable. I can always start over if it doesn't work out. A good reason to go buy some more beer

A couple more questions though. When you're making a sour starter from bottle dregs, do you start small and step it up, or pitch straight into your 800ml starter for example? Also, I didn't expect a pellicle to form so fast, how do you deal with that if stepping up? Was I just being too slow about it? And between steps and/or when pitching into a batch, do you chill and decant or pitch the whole thing?

I'm just not sure if I should treat sour dregs the same as when culturing sacch...

 

[m00ps]

start small and step it up. The size would depend on the number of bottles you have to pitch. If its a single bottle, id go with like 100ml at first then maybe 300 then you could go up to 800 or 1L. You just gotta ignorethe pellicle, itll come and go, change shape too.

For the first few steps, I wouldnt decant. You need all the cells you can get and theres still a bunch in suspension. At larger steps I'd decant

Just be patient and keep in mind that the bugs may not ferment as vigorously as sacch yeasts. It can take nearly a week to show activity depending on the health of the dregs

 

[eman_resu]

Ok, so it's not that different from culturing sacch. Just got unlucky with the moldy looking spot. Except if it's a yeast (or whatever) particle that got stuck up on the side from the swirling, and developed its own pellicle...?

But thanks again. If not this one, the next try will work out and I can start my first sour. Fascinating stuff