What's going on with my lacto starter?

[Agate]

I made one gallon of 1.040 starter wort from DME yesterday and added a small handful of base malt to it. 24 hours later, I have a small kräusen and it's clearly fermenting. I know some varieties of lacto can ferment sugar, but isn't this excessive? By tomorrow I think I'll need a blowoff hose!

Is this abnormal, or should I just let it ride? Thanks in advance!
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[microbusbrewery]

It's more than some...most lactobacillus can ferment sugar. Based on my experience, it's totally normal. For my Berliners, I usually pitch lactobacillus about a week ahead of yeast and so far I've always gotten a krausen similar to yeast.

 

[chefchris]

Looks normal. My lacto ferments usually have a clean, white krausen on them.

 

[Agate]

Thanks folks! That was my plan - give this a week or so to develop some sourness before pitching into a Berliner. Just wasn't sure what to expect from the lacto!

 

[Agate]

Follow up question, what's a good amount of time to leave the loose grain in the starter? I'm assuming it isn't doing much good once the starter wort is inoculated.

Sorry about the beginner questions, but after reading American Sour Beers, I really have the bug to make them!

 

[Hommel]

Different lacto strains are homo or hetero fermentative. if hetero it will generate alcohol and CO2 and CO2 == kreusen. so with lacto it is OK to see or not see kreusen depending on the strain and with pitching grain you are likely getting lots of different strains that are both homo and hetero.

as far as how fast it will grow up you can see my experiment here:

http://www.hommelhomebrew.com/hommel-homebrew/berliner-weisse-experiment-1-lacto-sources

i didn't do any cell counts so i can't tell you growth rates but it my 2-row experiment was still quite active after a few days so I would wait till day 3 to pitch it or a bit longer to let it drop out so you can pour off the excess wort. lacto is pretty dusty so it would probably take a week for it to drop out well.

 

[sweetcell]

there is more than just lacto on grain, so you might be growing something else in there. could be yeast, bacteria other than lacto, or god only knows what else.

 

[Agate]

Hommel, very interesting write-up! I think that answers some of my other questions, such as what kind of attenuation to expect from this.

Sweetcell, I'm sure there's any number of different microbes living in there, so it's a bit of a shot in the dark. I've played around with capturing yeast from things in my backyard, and the process is pretty random, and well, slow. I was pretty shocked to see the level of activity here after only 10 hours, so wasn't sure what to expect.

I think what I'll do here is let it go for a couple of weeks, and if it doesn't suck too bad pitch it in secondary with some clean fermented beer.

 

[stpug]

Hommel, very interesting write-up! I think that answers some of my other questions, such as what kind of attenuation to expect from this.

Sweetcell, I'm sure there's any number of different microbes living in there, so it's a bit of a shot in the dark. I've played around with capturing yeast from things in my backyard, and the process is pretty random, and well, slow. I was pretty shocked to see the level of activity here after only 10 hours, so wasn't sure what to expect.

I think what I'll do here is let it go for a couple of weeks, and if it doesn't suck too bad pitch it in secondary with some clean fermented beer.

I'm intrigued with what ever happened with your lacto starter from grain. Any updates you can provide? I DO like the idea of "unknown" microbes that you might get from grain as opposed to pure cultures you get from commercial; then again, it's those "unknown" microbes that cause me the most worry too

 

[Agate]

I let it go another week and got the nerve to try it. It was REALLY tart, lemony, with some molasses in the background.

I made a Berliner Weiss with it on 2/22. Half the wort got innoculated with the lacto starter, and the other half was pitched with brett. I'm trying to follow one of the recipes posted on here, so in a couple more weeks I'll combine them in secondary. The brett portion was supposed to get brett-c, but the vial showed up frozen and I ended up using TYB's Lochristi blend instead.

Anyways, the lacto part has been really clean so far. No death foot odors and no pellicles, I'm assuming because it's been under an airlock the whole time to keep out the oxygen. Been pretty happy with the results so far!

 

[DPBISME]

I made one gallon of 1.040 starter wort from DME yesterday and added a small handful of base malt to it. 24 hours later, I have a small kräusen and it's clearly fermenting. I know some varieties of lacto can ferment sugar, but isn't this excessive? By tomorrow I think I'll need a blowoff hose!

Is this abnormal, or should I just let it ride? Thanks in advance!
View attachment 256286

It might look like a lot of foam because you filled the bottle so much....

The bubbles are just stacked on themselves.... Viscosity is such that they are not going to "pop" right away.... Remember it is thick and sugary....

I would not go all the way to the NECK next time...

 

[Agate]

Hey, I like learning things the hard way!

 

[chefchris]

I let it go another week and got the nerve to try it. It was REALLY tart, lemony, with some molasses in the background.

I made a Berliner Weiss with it on 2/22. Half the wort got innoculated with the lacto starter, and the other half was pitched with brett. I'm trying to follow one of the recipes posted on here, so in a couple more weeks I'll combine them in secondary. The brett portion was supposed to get brett-c, but the vial showed up frozen and I ended up using TYB's Lochristi blend instead.

Anyways, the lacto part has been really clean so far. No death foot odors and no pellicles, I'm assuming because it's been under an airlock the whole time to keep out the oxygen. Been pretty happy with the results so far!

From what I've read you loose about 40% viability when freezing yeast. So all is not lost.

 

[Agate]

That's my understanding as well. That vial's sitting in the back of the fridge, waiting to go into secondary with something. I'm not sure what yet, but I'm definitely not going to waste the survivors. Any suggestions for what it would work well?

 

[chefchris]

If you use it as a primary yeast it's pretty clean. Toss it in secondary and it's a lot more fruity. It could work well in a lot of styles. Toss it in and find out!

 

[Agate]

If anyone's interested, here we are in secondary. Lacto portion blended in with the brett portion. All the grainy flavor is gone from the lacto, and now it's a nice clean sour. 3.5 gallons traditional, and 3.5 gallons on raspberries. And at 3.2% ABV, I'll be chugging this in summer!

View attachment ImageUploadedByHome Brew1426471100.843939.jpg

 

[chefchris]

That's awesome. I'm starting a Flanders Red solera soon and have 3 separate fermenters that are going into the barrel. One is Roselare with a ton of dregs, one is ECY20 Bug County, and the other is all lacto. It's going to be interesting to see them blended. I might do this again for a quicker turn around beer like you've done here.

Don't forget to chime back in once you're drinking it!

 

[Agate]

You betcha! I'm going to let these go 3-4 more weeks to make sure the brett cleans up any residual sugars from the lacto part, and obviously the raspberries, but I'm impressed with how much sourness developed over the 3 weeks in primary. Even the Lochristi brett part was nicely tart, so this will be awesome seeing how it changes in the bottle over the next few months.