First time playing with the funk , need Orval help

[Home_alone1]

So I’ve been buying Orval by the case , but the freshest ones I’ve been getting are from late December 2016, much better than my last ones that were 2014. I want to try and use the dregs for my French Saison I’ve got in primary right now , with the beer being this old am I going to get any of the Brett? I’ve got a case and another ordered so I can pitch multiple dregs into each fermentor if needed. Any thoughts on this ? I’ve never done wild before so I’m kind of nervous about screwing it up.

 

[radwizard]

Crack a bottle and pitch the dregs in a small starter. You should get a pretty good idea of how viable your dregs are. You will also get a chance to taste it before pitching. Keep the starter a little warm - you should see some activity in 2 to 4 days i would guess.

 

[Home_alone1]

Crack a bottle and pitch the dregs in a small starter. You should get a pretty good idea of how viable your dregs are. You will also get a chance to taste it before pitching. Keep the starter a little warm - you should see some activity in 2 to 4 days i would guess.

Sounds great ! I’ll go get a new flask from the brew shop on Monday as my current one is busy building up a wlp590 starter.

 

[couchsending]

If you want to use Orval dregs I wouldn’t use them for primary if you want Brett character.. do a clean primary ferment, transfer to secondary and pitch dregs.

 

[TandemTails]

I made a rye saison that fermented with WLP565. After a few weeks I added the dregs of 2 bottles of Orval (they were about a year and a half old). After a week or so a pellicle had formed. Great flavor from the Orval after a few months.

 

[Home_alone1]

So after 2 weeks of fermentation with WLP565 my final gravity was 1.001 I pitched dregs from 3 bottles of 2 year old Orval into the 5 gallon batch . In another 2 weeks I will bottle in champagne bottles I’ve been collecting , and let them age for a while. I’m pretty excited to maybe pop one open for next thanksgiving.thanks for the replies and once it’s done I’ll pop back in here and update this with how it went.

 

[Home_alone1]

Well , it looks like the Orval Brett is starting to do its thing , I bretted half my batch and I can see the surface of the two beers are different with the bretted beer having large bubbles forming , I think I’ll infect the whole batch because dang beer baby , you tasty .

 

[Home_alone1]

Well , I was at the lhbs and they had 2 vials I’d brett b from white labs ...... going to add it at botteling for a little extra funk as these beers are pretty clean and not very exciting.

 

[newtobrew1981]

Sounds great ! I’ll go get a new flask from the brew shop on Monday as my current one is busy building up a wlp590 starter.

It's funny that you used wlp590 cause I used the same strain. I made a 10 gal batch split to two carboys oyl 605 in one and yeast bay lacto blend in the other got the ph down to about 3.1 3.2 and pitched the wlp 590 when the gravity gets closer to terminal I'm adding amalgamation 1 and2 to the carboys. I'll be interested in hearing how your turned out keep us posted

 

[Home_alone1]

So far so good , it had an off flavor after 2 weeks in the bottle but whatever it was it’s gone now at 3 weeks . I still think it needs a little more time to age . Going to have another at week 4, I work every other week so I’ll try 2 a month or so and see how the flavor develops

 

[Home_alone1]

So this is turning out to be a great beer , maybe I’d like a bit more hop character but that’s ok . The Brett is really shining through. I can’t wait to brew this again with a slightly more complex grain bill. Next time I’ll use a grain bill from jester king , I’ve got 3 bottles of their beer to harvest funk out of !

 

[madscientist451]

You could also try to pitch the dregs from your own creations, keep it separate and develop your own "house strain".
Another possibility is re-pitching fermenter dregs that had Brett in them, or just dumping new beer into the old dregs (save time cleaning the carboy) then only taking 3/4 of the beer out and doing it again.
Warning: You'll soon have all kinds of carboys and jugs in different stages of funky ferment, you'll probably need more space.

 

[couchsending]

So this is turning out to be a great beer , maybe I’d like a bit more hop character but that’s ok . The Brett is really shining through. I can’t wait to brew this again with a slightly more complex grain bill. Next time I’ll use a grain bill from jester king , I’ve got 3 bottles of their beer to harvest funk out of !

Great thing about Jester King beers is you can primary ferment with their dregs.

They don’t bottle with a wine strain, they just use their house culture to bottle with.