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It would be interesting to do a controlled lambic following the same timeline - Hanseniaspora (and avoid the enteric bacteria) at the start, then Saccharomyces, then Lacto/Pedio and Acetobacter, finishing up with Brett and more aging.

Thanks so much for posting this! If anyone has any questions about the scientific methods used, I'd be happy to try to answer. Interesting that Brett doesn't really show up in big numbers until 6 months into fermentation. It's also interesting that Pediococcus damnosus is so prevalent - this...

Since you don't need a quantity of Brett high enough for a primary fermentation, you should be fine pitching directly. In fact, that might even aid the Brett in creating nice flavour compounds. Definitely give them a month or two to do their thing.

How long was your boil? What was the base malt? Did all the beers use the same yeast strain?

The Whitbread 'strain' is actually a blend. What you're seeing could be reasonably explained as one strain growing and fermenting quickly, then the subsequent growth and fermentation of another, slower-growing strain.

Belgian yeasts tend to behave a little stranger than many dry yeast products. Sometimes fermentation/growth takes a little longer, or the kraeusen sticks around a little longer. If there's still lots of floaters after a week or so, give the carboy a few gentle rocks to help the yeast rafts sink.

Does it look like this when you pour or only after a few sips? I'd still wager it's oils from your lips/skin. I assume your light lagers use adjunct which will result in weaker head retention unless you've added in something like carapils to compensate.

Maybe oils from your lips/skin killing the head in certain spots but not others?

You should really be using containers that are either sterile from the manufacturer, or autoclavable. Thankfully disposable sterile tubes are even cheaper than soda blanks...

Just chiming in that a lot of Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium species are anaerobes, which won't grow or don't like to grow in the presence of oxygen. This is why they like living in the intestines of mammals so much. To preserve the diversity of cultures in that probiotic supplement you would...

Conan is of English origin and was probably not originally used for extremely hoppy beers. I don't see why not, particularly in a beer where the low flocculation won't be an issue with regard to clarity. How about an American wheat? The stone fruit aroma of Conan and contribution to body would...

You get more viability from rehydrating dry yeast properly (I forget where specifically, but I've seen research somewhere). Of course, you need to ensure you are doing this using at the very least semi-sterile (boiled and cooled) water in a sanitized vessel. More viable yeast means more yeast...

No problem, the media might darken a bit more but that's about it.

Have you tasted the beer? What you've seen may be yeast rafts.

Brewing this now - hit 75% efficiency with BIAB, which I am very happy about. This boil smells great!

Microbiologist here. What media is this? The composition of the media will determine what is able to grow. Any one of those could be bacteria rather than yeast (using a microscope clears up the difference rather fast). There are also several genera of red-pigmented yeast that are not S...

This sounds a lot like a smoked berliner weisse I had at Bellwoods in Toronto. Since that was quite good, I will be brewing this.