Questions re: Jolly Pumpkin Dregs

[TAK]

I was lucky enough to score some Jolly Pumpkin bottles. I'm on quite the yeast wrangling kick lately, so of course I'm not opening any of these bottles without some fresh starter wort on the ready.

The bottles I got were...
- Oro de Calabaza
- Calabaza Blanca
- Luciernaga

Do all JP dregs contain the same resident population of bugs? Or should each of these be cultured separately? Do each of these bottles have LAB in them?

 

[signpost]

My understanding is that all of their beers are fermented with whatever is in the air and the barrels. So, that means there might be slight variations from one beer to the next, but it is essentially all the same. They do a true spontaneous fermentation and have never directly pitched any cultured yeast or bacteria.

However, they do pitch fresh yeast for bottling. So, along with whatever bugs are present in the beer, you are also getting some saccharomyces yeast in there too.

I've pitched the dregs directly into a carboy of beer that had already fermented out and it ended up exhibiting distinctly Jolly Pumpkin-esque flavors. Whatever the proportions of sacch to bugs, there is plenty to sour your beer.

 

[m00ps]

To my knowledge, all of JPs beers are fermented with the same yeast blend. Any of those would be candidates for harvesting. Personally, id make a small starter (300ml maybe) and toss them all in

Other option is to directly add them to a finished beer. This will work, but will take significantly longer than building up a decent pitch to add with the sacch or in a secondary

 

[Wes440]

All of the beers contain JP's resident barrel bug blend. I think Calabaza Blanca would have the most viable dregs due to it being the lowest in alcohol %. All of those beers would yield a good sour culture. Good culture to build up for multiple sour projects. 😀

If you're looking to get a good JP character to your beer, pitch the dregs along with wlp550 or something Belgian. Either copitch or in secondary. For maximum funk let it ride in primary for 6 months or longer.

 

[soundguy]

I just bottled a batch fermented with Belgian Ardennes (similar to 550) and dregs of a few jp beers. I have a few other beers on the way with the same blend. My beers have some very similar flavors to jolly pumpkin, I have a thread on here about the first one.
My research led me to believe they generally use 550 and then go into their barrels, sometimes they will start with a different primary yeast for special beers, but still use the same resident bugs in the barrels.

 

[TAK]

If they all have the same LAB, I'll probably keep them all together then. Probably 150 ml starters for each bottle, as I get to them. Then step them all up together with another 1000 ml. Since it was mentioned JP adds fresh Sacc at bottling, I'll probably let that age for a several months to loose viability in the Sacc, then feed it again.

 

[soundguy]

I had wonderful results pitching dregs right from the bottle along with primary yeast into a full size batch. It was very tart on its way to secondary after just a few weeks. I did this twice.
For further batches I have been using a sanitized turkey baster and sucking a few oz's out of my secondary and pitching it into other batches, this has also worked good.
My point is, you probably don't need to worry about growing the dregs up. They seem plenty strong even in small numbers.

 

[TAK]

My goal is to have a growler with a healthy population of their bugs in it, and keep that going as long as I can. I would decant and feed it on a regular basis. Pulling out some slurry any time I want to use it for a batch.

 

[suprchunk]

They do a true spontaneous fermentation and have never directly pitched any cultured yeast or bacteria.

Do you have a source for that? I thought I had read that they started with pitching and have since gone totally away from pitching. Though that doesn't negate the bugs that are still "in resident" from the original pitching. Which would make it nowhere close to a true spontaneous fermentation. Though I may have read that wrong years ago...

 

[MaddBaggins]

I had wonderful results pitching dregs right from the bottle along with primary yeast into a full size batch. It was very tart on its way to secondary after just a few weeks. I did this twice.
For further batches I have been using a sanitized turkey baster and sucking a few oz's out of my secondary and pitching it into other batches, this has also worked good.
My point is, you probably don't need to worry about growing the dregs up. They seem plenty strong even in small numbers.

I would agree with this. I've pitched dregs, from a single bottle, numerous times. The results have been amazing.
This was done as a secondary pitch, having giving sach time to do it's thing.

 

[MileHighBrewer]

Jolly Pumpkin does NOT do totally spontaneous fermentation. They use a pitch of sachh yeast, originally wlp550 but now a house evolved strain of that yeast, and they do open fermentation with filtered air pumped into the fermentation area. This brings in wild sacch, bretts, and LAB's. There are also plenty of bugs in their various barrels and foeders. They DID do spontaneous lambic style beer before, I forget the name, it has something to do with Dexter, where they are located.

The bugs are potent. Very, very potent. They will sour and funk already dry beer, hoppy beer, pretty much any beer. 1 bottle is plenty for 5 gal. Fresher the better. But, I have also used bottles over 2 years old. Its good stuff.

 

[Siberian]

Jolly Pumpkin's method for their 'fresher' beers that are not held for 6+ months in the brewery is to mash low (148-149). This gets them a highly fermentable wort that they then open ferment. The Bam Bieres in particular are done this way.

By having such a fermentable wort the sacch strain they are using can finish off almost all of it leaving little for the bugs.

I tried that method and got a super dry very nice sour in just two months, fermented down to almost 1.00. It's in kegs now waiting for one to kick.

 

[signpost]

Jolly Pumpkin does NOT do totally spontaneous fermentation. They use a pitch of sachh yeast, originally wlp550 but now a house evolved strain of that yeast, and they do open fermentation with filtered air pumped into the fermentation area. This brings in wild sacch, bretts, and LAB's. There are also plenty of bugs in their various barrels and foeders. They DID do spontaneous lambic style beer before, I forget the name, it has something to do with Dexter, where they are located.

The bugs are potent. Very, very potent. They will sour and funk already dry beer, hoppy beer, pretty much any beer. 1 bottle is plenty for 5 gal. Fresher the better. But, I have also used bottles over 2 years old. Its good stuff.

Ah, you're right. I think I was misremembering what I read in American Sour Beers. I was thinking of just the 'bugs' and forgot that was only part of their process.