Hey how's it going BA Brewers? I'm tryin to get a sour program going. I have a 10 month old sitting now. Bit my question is this, I want to brew a few small batches I can add fruit to, but I don't have any liquid yeast. I was using the Belgian Sour mix from White Labs. I can't get it anymore. Any recommendations? Is it possible for me to culture from say, Cantillon/ 3F bottles? How would I go about this. I think I have an idea, but I just want some advice, or other suggestions or other suitable strains. Any advice will be appreciated!!
Consider picking up American Sour Beers by Michael Tonsmeire. http://www.themadfermentationist.com http://www.milkthefunk.com/ Are both great resources. I love lambics and brew lots of lambic inspired beers. I currently have 6 gallons of 16 month old lambic like beer on 3F dregs, a just brewed 6 gallon batch of lambic like beer with grown up Tilquin dregs and am about to brew another batch on 3F dregs. Consider brewing one of the Mad Fermentationist recipes to start. Maybe use commercial Roeselare yeast with favorite dregs for your first brew to help increase the odds of success. These beers can be a bit of a crap shoot.
The only thing I will add to the above is maybe you want to start a barrel. Once you get a good thing going on the wood, then you can effectively maintain your bugs between batches of fresh wort.
You don't even need a barrel. There are people who have large tanks (plastic) or drums they do modified solera's in with great success. Bottles are decent. If you do bottle dregs get 3 or 4 of your favorite funky/sours and start there (the more complex, the better). However, my advice is to get a good packaged blend of bugs. I did a 14 month lambic with a very simple extract recipe and ECY01 Bugfarm (the one I used was the same as ECY20 BugCounty). It was amazingly good! I even tried the slurry from that batch against 4 other ECY single strains and Dirty Dozen in one gallon test trials. No contest, Bugfarm was still the best! Heard lots of good things about The Yeast Bay too, but haven't used them yet.
I've done it a couple of different ways with varying results. I've never actually bought bugs from a yeast company. I always culture dregs from a bottle. Make sure to check out Oldsock's list of bottle dregs. I recently blended three years of sour homebrew, which was an interesting experience. I would say that my best sours come from my barrel, it's also the easiest way to maintain a culture.
