First Sour Beer Dregs Starter Question?

[Mike Newman]

On Monday (3 days ago) I made a 2 liter, 1.045 starter and pitched the dregs from “Changling” Dark Sour Ale from Boulevard in Kansas City. It’s a lacto and Brett blend (don’t know if they pitch any priming yeast or not). So far I see some activity, no Krausen but when I agitate the one gallon fermenter lots of bubbles and foam arise to the top and dissipate after 4-5 min. What I want to know how do I tell if this starter will be ready to pitch into a Saison this Sunday?

Thanks!

 

[specharka]

Sorry mate, but there’s not enough viable cells in the dregs of a single bottle to ferment a 2L starter out completely, and definitely not enough cells built to ferment a standard 5 gallon batch after that. Typically you won’t see more than a 10-fold increase in population growth before aerobic fermentation concludes and anaerobic fermentation takes over. You can chill and decant the starter and continue stepping your starter up from there.

For future reference, try fermenting out 50-100 mL of starter wort with a single bottle of dregs, then step it up to 250-500 mL once fermentation has taken off, and then 1.25-2.5L from there (5-fold increase in volume per step). Typically it will take me about 2 weeks to step up a single bottle to a cell count suitable for fermentation of a standard 5 gallon batch.

 

[RPh_Guy]

Fortunately the Brett cell count doesn't matter when it's being pitched for a secondary fermentation.

It's ready to pitch right now, assuming the saison already fermented

The 2L starter was excessive for this usage.
Cheers