I am looking to collect the dregs from several different sour beers, and I was wondering how long before I brew should or can I start collecting them? Also, what is the best way to store them? I am trying to collect at least a cup of dregs, as I am informed the more dregs you add the more sour the beer will be correct?
If you have a cup of dregs there's something wrong with your beer, there's usually a just a thin film on the bottom of the bottle. The way I do this typically is to rack the beer to secondary, drink an Orval, Jolly Pumpkin or any other brett or sour bottle conditioned beer. After I pour the beer into a glass I'll rinse the bottle with a couple of tablespoons of boiled/cooled water from my electric kettle and pour that liquid directly into secondary. So this every night for a week with a variety of beers and sit back and wait. Yesterday I kegged a porter I soured this way, even warm and flat it's delicious. It had been in secondary about 6 months with a wide variety of bottle dregs added.
It kind of depends on what you want to do with your wort. If you add a bunch of dregs and ferment it out with just those, the beer will be very sour. If you ferment with a yeast and add the dregs near the end, or after you'd hit FG with a yeast, the beer won't be as sour.
I make a starter wort of roughly 150 grams DME to 2L of liquid (3/4 water, 1/4 apple juice, boil w/ nutrients, chill in 4 pint jars). I will drink 2 sours and split a pint jar to the dregs (you can put it into the bottle direct or I use the single serve glass jar teas w/ an airlock). After a couple weeks, shake it up, dump some into the beer you're souring. If you keep feeding that starter your souring bacteria will grow quicker than the Brett and you will get even more sour beers. A single round starter should serve to infect 3 beers.
Thanks for the responses. I'm looking to brew in about three weeks or so, and I wanted to start saving some of the dregs now. I plan on pitching the dregs with a sacch strain right from the get go.
