New to Sours and Innoculating

[cardinalsfan]

Hey everyone!! I've been brewing for a while, over a year now, and things are going well. I love sours and I have a good pipeline going so I wanted to try my hand at making some sours.

My first sour will be a brewferm framboise fermented with WLP655. I just want to make sure I have the idea right so bear with me.

I bought some oak cubes and I plan to drill holes in them for more surface area for bugs and yeast. First I'll boil the oak cubes in water for about 10 minutes and let them cool and dry. Then I'll make a 500ml starter with some DME to 1.050 and add the WLP655 as well as the drilled oak cubes. I'll let it ferment out for a few days and then pull the cubes and dry them. From there, I'll save some of the starter in the white labs tube and pitch the rest into the framboise. The white labs tube will go into the freezer and I'll keep the cubes in a bag for whatever I need to sour next.

First off, any issues with my logic? Second, what is the best way to dry the oak cubes? I have a toaster oven I could dry them with or would it be best to leave them outside to dry? Would I be better off storing them wet? Third, can I freeze some of the starter or would it be better to leave it in the vial and just fridge it until I need it?

Sorry for all the questions, I just want to get this right. I'm also planning a lacto fermented cider so I'll have some questions on that as well. Thanks!!

 

[29thfloor]

You definitely don't want to freeze a yeast starter. It's possible to freeze yeast but you can't just put a vial in the freezer, you need to prepare it with glycerine to prevent damage to the yeast cells.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f13/guide-making-frozen-yeast-bank-35891/

I've never heard of anyone using oak cubes in a starter but that doesn't mean you can't do it. I'm just not sure what the benefit would be. You may be better off letting the framboise ferment for a while and then adding the cubes during aging/souring. You could even do it without the cubes at all. At the homebrew scale I think the oak cubes are just used to add some actual oak character/flavor but aren't necessary for the bugs to do their job.

If you have a barrel I think it makes sense to rely more on the wood to give the bugs somewhere to live, but I'm not sure that makes sense with oak cubes. If anything you probably would just leave them wet but I'm not sure how viable it is to store and reuse them anyway. You could probably just leave them in the fermenter and then pitch something else on top, but I think taking them out you might run the risk of an unwanted infection.

 

[cardinalsfan]

You definitely don't want to freeze a yeast starter. It's possible to freeze yeast but you can't just put a vial in the freezer, you need to prepare it with glycerine to prevent damage to the yeast cells.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f13/guide-making-frozen-yeast-bank-35891/

I've never heard of anyone using oak cubes in a starter but that doesn't mean you can't do it. I'm just not sure what the benefit would be. You may be better off letting the framboise ferment for a while and then adding the cubes during aging/souring. You could even do it without the cubes at all. At the homebrew scale I think the oak cubes are just used to add some actual oak character/flavor but aren't necessary for the bugs to do their job.

If you have a barrel I think it makes sense to rely more on the wood to give the bugs somewhere to live, but I'm not sure that makes sense with oak cubes. If anything you probably would just leave them wet but I'm not sure how viable it is to store and reuse them anyway. You could probably just leave them in the fermenter and then pitch something else on top, but I think taking them out you might run the risk of an unwanted infection.

Thanks for the info. The cubes are solely for keeping some of the bugs to use later. Your idea to add them to primary is a better idea than adding them to the starter. That would get them inoculated and I'd be able to use them to infect other brews.

Is there another way to keep bugs and yeast active for future brews?

 

[dcp27]

personally I wouldnt make a starter, you'll pretty much just be propagating the sacchro and alter the ratios in the blend.

Is there another way to keep bugs and yeast active for future brews?

you can just use the cake or bag the oak you add, so you can pull it out & toss that into whatever is next

 

[cardinalsfan]

ok, so no starter and just throw the oak in at the end of fermentation to innoculate and then move it to whatever other brew I want to sour. Sounds like a much better plan than what I had, thanks!!

 

[Calder]

Make a starter. WLP655 has sacc yeast in it. All the starter will do is increase the population of the sacc yeast since it is the dominant yeast.

I don't believe the theory that starters or even re-use of yeast upsets the balance. OK, if you re-pitch on a sour cake to try and create a sour beer in a few months it can make a difference. The key is to pitch only a small amount of the bugs. If you are only pitching a small amount of bugs, it really doesn't make much difference .... the sacc grows first and eats the simple sugars. Then the brett grows eventually reaching it's maximum population around 8 months, but affects the flavors starting at a could of months up to about 18 months. Next is the lacto and Pedio, which take up to a year or more to reach their maximum population, and affect the flavor for up to 3 years, or longer.

I make a small starter with some saved 'bug mix' (about 2 pints), add dregs from any sours I have to the starter, add small amounts of any cake I bottle at the same time. With added dregs and cake and additional starter wort, my starter usually ends up around 5 pints.

I do not aerate the starter as I am not trying to maximize sacc population, just making a small beer.

When I pitch the starter, I pour some into a half pint mason jar which I store in the fridge ready to use as my 'bug mix' in my next sour a few months later. Seems to work fine for me.

I don't know if oak stores bugs or not, but I also add oak to each of my sours and then transfer them to my next sour at bottling. I don't dry them out, just keep them in beer.