Pitching dregs in a mostly fermented beer

[christyle]

I brewed a sour wort berliner that ended up funky, sweet and grainy, and was going to pitch it, but I had a bottle of almanac Farm to Barrel and decided to pitch the dregs and see what happened. The beer had fermented down below 1.010 before pitching the dregs, so there wasn't much left to chew on, but figured what the heck. It developed a little pellicle in the first week and I pulled a sample to see where it was headed and it added a good touch of needed tartness, as well as cleaned up a bit of the grainy sweet flavors. I know I am a bit premature in expecting much out of this beer (Initial pitch was about a month ago), but if I had already fermented out a good amount of the sugars, can I expect these dregs to do much out of this beer? If I wanted them to continue working and adding some sour, what would be the best method of adding fermentables, and what should I use? I'm not in a rush, but I don't want to waste my time waiting for it to get sour if it's not got the means to do so.

In the end, I intend to do some white wine soaked oak and probably some fruit.

 

[m00ps]

You dont need a high FG to get good character from sour dregs. I read Chad from Crooked Stave was talking about how the bugs dont need anything to "munch" on to get the character. My last 2 sours saisons were below 1.005 when I picthed my house sour culture. 30 days later they were below 1.000.

I would continues putting dregs of your favorite sours into the beer. Ive found a large variety of mircrobes is the key to a great sour character. My sour culture is from a numebr of beers from Prarier, Crooked Stave, Anchorage, and a couple Belgians. Im guessing its the variety of mircrobes that can bring a beer down to a 3.2 pH in under 2 months

 

[christyle]

I think i've heard the same, just looking to get some input, as I'm newer to these. I should be harvesting some more dregs this weekend when a buddy visits. I haven't gotten any more good sours at home to harvest from.

Do you have a harvested mix you keep adding to in a fridge or the like for your "House culture"? I feel it would be a great help for some of my less-than-ideal quick sour berliners.

 

[m00ps]

Yeah I made my first 3 sours using various dregs in each one. The 3rd one was easily the best so I stepped up the dregs from a few of those, added in a few other new favorite commercial sours, and made a big starter. I let that sit for 2 weeks at room temp and have been pitchign that into my new sours. Its worked very well. Sours extremely quickly, the pH got down into the low 3s after 2 weeks or so. I think making a starter of the dregs instead of pitchign the small amount from the bottles into your beer definitely help things move along faster

Ive read you can store brett and bugs at room temp just fine since they evolved to live in wood barrels, but I still store it in a white labs vial in the fridge when I dont have a starter going.

The decanted start wort taste better than half of the beer I make....not sure how to feel about it

 

[sweetcell]

You dont need a high FG to get good character from sour dregs. I read Chad from Crooked Stave was talking about how the bugs dont need anything to "munch" on to get the character.

that applies to brett. lactic acid bacteria - lacto and pedio - need some form of sugar to work their magic.

I would continues putting dregs of your favorite sours into the beer.

good advice!

Im guessing its the variety of mircrobes that can bring a beer down to a 3.2 pH in under 2 months

sourness can be achieved quickly, but often interesting character can take longer. in my experience, brett takes longer to do it's thing (and that thing is beautiful )

 

[sweetcell]

but if I had already fermented out a good amount of the sugars, can I expect these dregs to do much out of this beer? If I wanted them to continue working and adding some sour, what would be the best method of adding fermentables, and what should I use?

i would add different kinds of sugars to the beer, to ensure that there is a little something for everyone. i would boil up a mix of sucrose, DME and malto-dextrine, cool and pitch. if you're willing to give it 6+ months, you could even add some starch (boiled oats, flour, etc).

 

[sweetcell]

Ive read you can store brett and bugs at room temp just fine since they evolved to live in wood barrels, but I still store it in a white labs vial in the fridge when I dont have a starter going.

the thing about wood barrels is that some brett can digest cellulose. if you keep your brett in a jar, it doesn't have access to that food source (and your brett might not be one of the strains that can digest wood).

chad yacobson, of the crooked stave, has claimed that brett does better at room temp than in the fridge. but some recent experiments seem to contradict his point of view: http://www.milkthefunk.com/wiki/Brettanomyces#Storing_Brett

i don't believe that bacteria can live off of wood, but need to confirm that with someone who knows a lot more than i do.

IMO, for extended storage, keep brett and bugs in the fridge. take them out every now and them, pour out spent beer, feed, let ferment, then back in fridge.

 

[christyle]

i would add different kinds of sugars to the beer, to ensure that there is a little something for everyone. i would boil up a mix of sucrose, DME and malto-dextrine, cool and pitch. if you're willing to give it 6+ months, you could even add some starch (boiled oats, flour, etc).

I may mix up some Sucrose and DME, but would maltodextrin do any good? Can those bugs chew away at it, I was under the impression it was non-fermentable. What about some yeast nutrient?

 

[sweetcell]

I may mix up some Sucrose and DME, but would maltodextrin do any good? Can those bugs chew away at it, I was under the impression it was non-fermentable. What about some yeast nutrient?

MD is non-fermentable by sacch. brett, and i believe pedio, will ferment it. my thinking in including MD is that the faster-acting microbes like sacch and lacto might ferment all the simple sugars before the slow-starters like brett and pedio have a chance to get going.

nutrients are probably a good idea. i'm sure the brett will appreciate them.

 

[stpug]

I may mix up some Sucrose and DME, but would maltodextrin do any good? Can those bugs chew away at it, I was under the impression it was non-fermentable. What about some yeast nutrient?

My understanding (which may be faulty) is that you have a mixed microbe environment in the beer and the most active and abundant microbes will utilize the sugar source first - not because they "take turns" but simply a numbers and activity game. Assuming living sacc yeast and lacto bacteria are present, any simply sugar sources will likely be used by these two microbes first. The temperature of the beer/wort should play a significant role in which is favored. In the case of room temperature beer/wort, sacc should be the front runner; in the case of a very warm beer/wort without many (or any) IBUs then lacto should stand a good chance as well. Brett and pedio will develop their character very slowly so whatever you give them will need to be around for quite a while so they can utilize it to the fullest extent possible.

With that said, and following my (possibly faulty) logic, if I was looking to increase both alcohol and contribute a fairly small amount of sacc-unfermentable sugars to the mix for other microbes then using the sucrose-DME route would suffice but I would expect many months of waiting to get your final result. If I wanted to increase both alcohol and funk (with some sour) then the sucrose-dme-maltodextrin route would probably work better, and giving some yeastcake (dying sacc yeast) for the brett to work with will help with funk. If I wanted to target a specific characteristic in my beer (funk vs sour) then I would look further into carbon/sugar sources and pick those that promote the character I hope to get - granted, there's no guarantee of anything with mixed-microbe beers .

I was in the latter scenario earlier this year - a beer sitting at <1.000 FG, mixed microbes (sacc, brett, lacto, pedio), hoping for sour but only getting barely tart. Wanting a lot more sour but not a lot of brett character I looked into carbon/sugar sources that were usable by pedio but not brett (which pretty much excluded sacc too), and what I found was that several published research papers suggested a sugar source called mannose fit the criteria (usable by pediococcus but not by brettanomyces). Fast forward two months and 1.5 oz of mannose additions to a keg - I have a beautiful sour saison on tap . I posted a thread with the details here that have more details if interested.

I would play with the factors based on my desired outcome: increase alcohol?, increase brett character?, increase sour?, a mix of two or three of those factors?, etc. I would pick my sugar/carbon sources based what I was hoping to get. And then, remembering that this batch was once slated for dumping, not have very high hopes of the end product and be pleasantly surprised if it turned into something you actually enjoy.

 

[christyle]

As it sits now, the beer is drinkable...but I was debating continuing experimenting. I don't want to invest too much into this if the base wasn't very good to begin with, so my primary concerns here are cleaning up off flavors, and increasing tartness. I don't care about alcohol, my only reason for adding sugars was to increase the sourness through more activity, which I'm unsure if that's correct thinking or not...

This was originally a 55% 2-row/45% white wheat malt bill, soured with lacto from spiked grains, then fermented with us-05. I think I transferred off the cake into the current carboy, I forget now. There was light lacto character before, but any lacto was killed by the boil. I now have remnant us-05 and whatever dregs were in the Almanac sour in there. Looking to add more bugs when I drink a worthwhile sour.

I'll look into the Mannose, never heard of it...

 

[stpug]

As it sits now, the beer is drinkable...but I was debating continuing experimenting. I don't want to invest too much into this if the base wasn't very good to begin with, so my primary concerns here are cleaning up off flavors, and increasing tartness. I don't care about alcohol, my only reason for adding sugars was to increase the sourness through more activity, which I'm unsure if that's correct thinking or not...

This was originally a 55% 2-row/45% white wheat malt bill, soured with lacto from spiked grains, then fermented with us-05. I think I transferred off the cake into the current carboy, I forget now. There was light lacto character before, but any lacto was killed by the boil. I now have remnant us-05 and whatever dregs were in the Almanac sour in there. Looking to add more bugs when I drink a worthwhile sour.

I'll look into the Mannose, never heard of it...

Mannose was just something I came across through research that seemed to possibly "fit the bill" for what I was looking to do. I paid the cost (it's not cheap) and it worked out pretty well for me. Again, not many guarantees can be made when brewing sour beers, and there may be more suitable options for you.

If I was in your situation (meh beer, want more tart/sour, don't want to invest too much time/effort/money, funk and/or alcohol would be fine) then I would probably go with some DME and maltodextrin. The DME should enrich the base beer character (berliners can be lacking in that department) and give both some easy and hard sugars to the microbes. This will increase your ABV some degree depending on how much DME you use and change the base beer flavor to varying extents depending on the type of DME you use (amber DME might be an interesting option to give a little caramel/toffee character). Maltodextrin should basically just be food for the brett and pedio (lacto too if the IBUs are low enough) that likely came with the almanac dregs. You should get both some sour and brett character from the malto, and I'd guess that you'd get more brett character than sour, but still some sour nonetheless. The cost of a pound of DME plus 6-8 oz of matodextrin should be under $5 which is pretty good for an experiment. Timewise is anyone's guess but I would give it 2 solid months before sampling and then judge your next sample pull based on how that one progressed.

 

[christyle]

I have some light DME, i'll have to pick up some maltodextrin (needed it for my porter the other day and couldn't find it). A dash of nutrient couldn't hurt, so I'll probably toss some in with it. How much should I be adding you think? A liter or two of around 1.05 wort? Thanks!

 

[stpug]

I have some light DME, i'll have to pick up some maltodextrin (needed it for my porter the other day and couldn't find it). A dash of nutrient couldn't hurt, so I'll probably toss some in with it. How much should I be adding you think? A liter or two of around 1.05 wort? Thanks!

I would personally add a highly concentrated wort. I would figure out the ABV/gravity increase of my addition based on my beer volume. It would probably be something like 1-2 lbs DME in a very small amount of water to create a concentrate (e.g. 1 lb DME in 1.5 cups water). The idea here is that you're building up the original gravity after-the-fact so that you would have started in the 1.040-1.050 range as opposed to the 1.030 range - that's the gist anyway (granted, I don't know where you started or where you're currently sitting)

I would probably use somewhere from 4-8 oz maltodextrin for a 5 gallon batch depending on how long I was willing to wait and how much extra character I want from the brett. If I don't want a lot of brett character and/or don't want to wait a long time then I'd go 4 oz; if I'm okay with more brett character and/or willing to wait it out then I'd go up to about 8 oz. I mention "brett character" because I believe that it will be the main contributor from this addition so use it as your guide so you don't end up with something that's just too funky for your likes.

Nutrients: You got me. I only use them for starters or high non-malt beers at the recommended rate. I would follow my usual rule of thumb though, which is always "less is more".

You can also do a couple sugar/dextrin additions over time if you want to start small but later on sense things are headed in the direction you wanted - making sure to purge excess oxygen anytime you open your vessel. This is what I did with my sour saison (added 0.75 oz mannose waited 5 weeks; liked the change I got; added another 0.75 oz and waited another 5 weeks).

 

[sweetcell]

Nutrients: You got me. I only use them for starters or high non-malt beers at the recommended rate. I would follow my usual rule of thumb though, which is always "less is more".

i believe that "it can't hurt" is applicable here. at best, it'll help out the microbes in the beer. at worse, it'll do nothing and either settle out, or add a trace amount of nutrition to the final beer (our bodies can also use zinc, DAP, etc...)

 

[stpug]

i believe that "it can't hurt" is applicable here. at best, it'll help out the microbes in the beer. at worse, it'll do nothing and either settle out, or add a trace amount of nutrition to the final beer (our bodies can also use zinc, DAP, etc...)

Yes, "it can't hurt" should be true here. I just meant I would opt for "less" than the recommended for 5 gallons. Good point sweetcell!

 

[MaddBaggins]

the thing about wood barrels is that some brett can digest cellulose. if you keep your brett in a jar, it doesn't have access to that food source (and your brett might not be one of the strains that can digest wood).

chad yacobson, of the crooked stave, has claimed that brett does better at room temp than in the fridge. but some recent experiments seem to contradict his point of view: http://www.milkthefunk.com/wiki/Brettanomyces#Storing_Brett

i don't believe that bacteria can live off of wood, but need to confirm that with someone who knows a lot more than i do.

IMO, for extended storage, keep brett and bugs in the fridge. take them out every now and them, pour out spent beer, feed, let ferment, then back in fridge.

I've taken to keeping a mason jar of various dregs in the fridge. I like the idea of feeding it a little from time to time. Next time I make a starter, I'll add a little of the wort to it.