ECY01 Bug Farm - Brewing Experiences

I haven't used ECY01 yet, but I'm in the process of using their Flanders Strand and BugCounty. The Flanders strand that was noticeably sour after a month. The BugCountry is three months in and merely tart at this point. I mashed high on both to give the bugs something to chew on over the long haul. The wort on the Flanders had a lot of crystal type malts so I think the bugs have taken a liking to these. The BugCountry was lighter and similar to what you are describing. I might recommend adding a touch of Crystal , the resulting beer is going to end up bone dry regardless. Good luck in the project.

 

I know the exact blend varies from year to year, but I'm looking for some feedback on your approach towards using ECY01 and your results. Please feel free to share whatever details you can. Some things I'm particularly interested in knowing are:

1. No.

2. No.

3. Yes, but only 20 ml of the slurry. Kept it in secondary for 4 months, added after beer racked onto fresh peaches.

4. No

5. Came out great. Clean beer then after 4 months it was noticeably sour, very citric sourness with a touch of funk (more fruity, but likely attributable to the Brett Trois I added along with the Bug Farm).

5a/b. The beer was a blend of two different beers and had peaches and candi sugar added, so accurate calculation of FG and App attenuation would be inaccurate because I don't remember the blending proportions.

5c. Amount of Sour Development? A lot, quite sour, but nothing over the top. I can take a pH reading if desired.

5d. Amount of Brett Funk Development? Minimal, mostly fruity.

My first project potentially using it is coming up next month. The plan is to brew a 2.5bbl batch of blonde ale, age it in primary for 1 month, then transfer to a french oak barrel and condition it for say 8 more months. I was thinking of splitting the primary fermentation in half, fermenting half with blonde/golden ale yeast and fermenting the other half with ECY01. Then I am planning on racking to a 60 gallon french oak barrel and pitching more ECY01 in the barrel. At this time, I have 10% wheat malt in the recipe and no unmalted / flaked additions. Thoughts?

Ferment the non-sour blonde portion with a strain with low attenuation to leave additional material for the bugs to chew on. If the beer is not sour enough, after about 4-6 months when sacch is dormant or dead, add some candi sugar and the bugs will produce a great deal of acid.

 

Just wanted to toss my hat in here. Just got some ECY bug's on my way and trying to get some ideas and some info together.. Not even honestly sure WHAT type of funk/sour I want.. So I'll steal some help/recipe from ya'll.

 

Ditto. I'll probably do an extract lambic-style sour the first time around until I get a handle on all-grain better. I've brewed this twice, one with mango and once with Sauvignon blanc grapes, with great success. I used WY 3278 for both, so the ECY should work even better.

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f72/lambic-bos-3rd-bos-two-golds-322168/

 

Thanks for the link. I'll check it out. I do all grain, and I think being able to step mash will only help me, as well as hand picking what grains I want to go along with it.. I'll use that as a starting point!

Cheers.

 

ive got
12# base malt (forget what type ATM)
1# carared and
.5# c-40
mashed at 158

on bug county rounding 7 weeks in primary. may bottle in a few weeks at the same time throw some onto sour cherries, and into another 1 gal. and wait for peach season.

so for your questions:
1) no, just mashed high

2) ish, ECY 20 has ECY 1 in it
2a) tasted at 6 weeks, too hop-bitter (my fault) not where i want the sour but gravity is where FG should be for a clean yeast. will take another reading this weekend and see if anything changed

3) yes in the future tense
3a) see 2a

4) yes i will, carry over whatever is in suspension but might give a little stir for the fruit additions

5) we must waits

 

I did a lambic-ish wort with Bugfarm 2 and 3 years back. After 2 years both were pretty nice, definitely heavy on the acetic character, a bit more than I like, but worked well as part of a sour blend. Both were pitched without a starter.

 

[bottlebombsound]

 

Although there is probably some truth to this , I think the manufacturer is probably being overly cautious. I think given enough time all of the bugs in the blend would put their own personal touch on the beer. How much it would deviate from the original composition probably remains to be seen. Maybe use the same culture on a few beers to see how it changes? Might be a good experiment.

 

I'm gonna do mine in primary with the bug farm... Then probably get a barrel, and run through the barrel a couple times with some other beers and then turn it sour.

Still trying to dial in a recipe for it though. Need to go to the store tomorrow.

 

Thats a lot of beer. Good luck

 

Regarding starters with ECY mixes, this is Al on Facebook:

"Many questions arise with starters for mixed cultures such as the Bugfarm and how to best use it. Typically, the blend may be used as a primary or a secondary fermentation culture. ECY01 contains enough cells to ferment a 5 gal batch as a primary agent. If pitched into a secondary, it is important to remember that the wort composition is paramount in the aging process (high in dextrin for example). If you feel that the brew is low in dextrins, pitch in primary or right at kreusen if using another yeast, or add more fermentable substrate.

As for starter cultures of these blends - a starter is can be accomplished if over a few months old for these mixed cultures or if inoculating a larger batch size, of course. Prep starters by using half of the bottle aerobically (with O2) and the other half without O2 (mostly for the Pediococcus benefit). The populations of the blend will not be grossly imbalanced - since you will be aging this wild, sour brew anyway. It is harvesting the sediment that really gets unbalanced or repeated generations of growth. Hopefully this bit of info helps realize the potential of these crazy brews. Final word - know your wort and keep your bugs happy and enjoy."

https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=832005933479959&id=168646113149281&stream_ref=5

 

Good info.

Kind of exciting to see what would come if you pitched another beer on the cake, or tossed in a bottle of the "wild" beer with some new wort and looked to see what happened.

 

I recently brewed 16 gallons of a blonde and split it into three different fermenters to pitch ECY20 on. Five gallons with just Bug County, five gallons of Bug County with dregs, 6 gallons with Roeselare. Looking forward to comparing these. I used the ECY20 in primary. No starters. There's 3# wheat and 1.5# of flaked oat in the 16 gallon batch for long term food for the brett. They've been fermenting about 6 weeks, and I'll probably taste in a few weeks. I'll share more information as I taste them. I'm new to sours, so I too am intriqued how these develop.