1 gallon 100% Brett IPA questions

[Bassaholic]

I am planning on brewing an IPA next weekend and I was thinking of making an extra gallon to do a separate 100% Brett fermentation. I just picked up a bottle of Allagash Confluence and I really want to use that to ferment with. I was wondering if I need to make a low gravity starter and step it up once or twice? Or would it be possible to just pitch that directly into the 1 gallon of IPA?

If I need to make a starter, would 1 week be enough time to build up the Brett? I only have 1 stir plate and I was planning on using that to build up some Conan for the rest of the IPA. Sorry if this question has already been asked, I could only find info about pitching dregs into an already fermented beer.

 

[LesIsMore]

I think stepping the dregs up would be a good idea if that's all the yeast you're pitching for primary. About 7 or 8 days would be good for each step, so if you're going to do multiple steps, giving yourself 2 weeks would be a good idea.

 

[Bassaholic]

So I made a 1L starter on a stir plate 3 days ago and I was surprised to see that a little over 24 hours later I already noticed some activity. This morning when I woke up, the starter was much lighter in color and smelled very Belgiany. I did some research and found out that allagash actually uses a house Belgian strain as well as their Brett strain. Will the Brett just be overpowered from the sacc? Of can I still pitch it into my IPA?

 

[sweetcell]

if you smelled & saw something after just 24 hours, i would strongly suspect sacch. unless you good with lab work (streaking, ID'ing under a microscope, isolating single colonies, etc) you're not going to be able to separate the brett and the sacch quickly.

you could cold-crash the yeast and make another starter using malto-dextrin only, which the sacch can't ferment that. leave it on a stir-plate for 7-10 days. do that a few times and you should have a big population of brett and a starved & dying sacch.