When best to repitch a buggy cake?

[TAK]

I have a vial of ECY20, and I'd like to get (at least) two brews out of it. Ideally, it'll be the start of two soleras.

The plan is to brew up a batch of a lambic style wort and pitch the whole vial into that. After roughly a month of primary, I'll rack off the cake into a glass carboy. I'll keep a couple cups of the cake to inoculate another lambic style batch down the road, which will be the top off for that solera.

The rest of the cake will be used for another batch.

But when is the best time to use it?

An obvious answer is to rack the new beer right onto the cake after I transfer the first beer and remove the portion of the cake that I want to save.

Alternatively, I'm wondering if there would be a benefit to storing the rest of the cake in a sanitized container and waiting a while.

Either way, the proportions of the mix, of course, will have strayed away from what it was in the vial. Immediately after going to work on the first beer, I expect the yeast population will be large, and moreover the Sacc population will have replicated disproportionately to the Brett population.

The potential benefit I could see to letting the cake sit in storage is that some of the Sacc will start to die off while the Brett and other bugs stay viable. Thus, I may be able to allow the proportions to stray back closer to a mix that is not Sacc dominant.

Thoughts?

 

[Wes440]

Congrats on scoring some Bug County, I'm going to use it for the first time myself in a lambic this weekend, and I have the same intention of stretching it as far as possible. Here's my plan:

Pitch 90% of the vial into ~6 gallons of a pale "lambicish" style wort, probably going with a base recipe from American Sour Beers from Mr. Tonsmeire. Then pitch the last 10% into a small starter of unhopped wort and let that build up for 1-2 weeks.

This version of ECY20 has some wild sacch yeast and although I'm planning on racking the beer off after 6-8 weeks and washing and saving that slurry, I'm curious whether that sacch will still be viable.

Point is, I want to play around with this mixture and repitch a few times, hopefully with the wild sacch hanging around to help!

I'm thinking then a sour red, then sour brown. I'll be happy of I get that far! Either way I'm saving what I can.

I still need plans for my Dirty Dozen, and not so worried about the shelf life quite as much on that mixture...

 

[Wes440]

Also I decided to buy a plastic big mouth bubbler carboy to dedicate to this sour as a secondary fermentation vessel. Going to primary in the bucket, then rack to it for the benefit of a slow oxygen supply.

I suppose as far as saving the wild sacch yeast, the sooner you rack the better, but I can't see racking before 3 or 4 weeks being ideal. This is my first whole sour batch, and I'm just going by Mike Tonsmeire's information mainly - which has been super helpful.

Until now I've just been piggy - backing 1 gallon glass jugs off of my regular brews and using his method of sacch plus dregs to sour each one. Those are coming along, but all are still pretty new.

 

[TAK]

Right on, Wes. Congrats in getting yourself some too. I felt like I stumbled on a proverbial gold mine when I saw it the "In Stock" stamp on L2B, but it seemed to last a while this time.

Anyone else, any other thoughts specifically to the OP? Am I just as well holding the cake for a while, or is it really preferable to re-pitch right away?

I've only got so many brew days in given time period, and I'd kinda like to get a Brett ale going in time to have it this coming fall/winter. So, that's one practical reason I'd hold this cake to re-pitch later, aside from the potential, theoretical benefit I mentioned. But, if I should brew the sours back to back to use that cake right away though, I will.

 

[Calder]

A couple of thoughts.

1) Keep the beer on the cake for 6 to 8 months. Rack of the cake and then use it for the next beer. Most of the sacc will have died by then. Basically store the bugs in the beer.

2) This is what I do. After about a week (while it is still actively fermenting), I rack off 1.5 liters and store in a large wine bottle with an airlock. I then use this as my bug pitch for my next brew with those bugs. It is usually a year before I re-use it. I always have some Belgian strain of sacc ready if I don't see active fermentation withing 3 to 4 days.

I don't buy the "proper bug proportion" story. All the elements in the mix have different timelines, so I really don't think it matters much what the proportions are. For the bug mixes you buy, I think the most critical item is the low amount of sacc. If you make a starter, you make the sacc dominant. If you straight pitch, the rest of the bugs have a chance to increase their population before alcohol is produced, reducing the overall time of the project ....... still a long time!