Help with using dregs for sour beer production.

I can't tell you for sure, because I have always pitched a white labs or wyeast culture of bugs with dregs. Can you be more specific to which dregs you are using? If I understand- you are using dregs for both your sacch strain and bugs? If so, you will want to build up a starter with your saison (sacch strains). Its not necessary for the bugs, but won't hurt either.

 

The answer is variable. Partly it depends on the age of each of the beers you are using for dregs. The younger they are the more viable the cultures will be. If it were me I would have a mason jar with around 500ml of 1.020 steril wort ready, enjoy the sours and add the dregs to the jar to wake them up some (no shaking, just let it wake up slow) a week or 2 before brew day, then pitch it all in with the Sacc strain.

 

I got all the sourness I needed from the dregs of one 375mL bottle most recently. YMMV, but I don't think 5 is necessary - although the age of the bottles should be taken into account as suggested.

Can you split the fermentation? Go American (RR, JP) vs. Belgium (Cantillon/3F). This would be a great comparison. I would leave Fantome out (depending on the bottle, I guess).

 

I've done it with one bottle of Temptation before. It will get sour, it just takes time. That's the most important thing to remember, time and patience.

Adding more bottle dregs won't hurt anything, they'll just add more biodiversity. More dregs won't make it sour any faster. Bacteria grow rapidly but also buffer their own activity, but they and Brett don't need large pitch counts to affect a beer.

 

I can't find the podcast right now, but I seem to recall Ron Jefferies stating that Jolly Pumpkin uses wine yeast to bottle carb and he wouldn't recommend trying to harvest the bugs. He said he knows ppl do it, but you're not getting exactly what they are using.

Of course, since I can't locate the podcast now, I'm not sure if I'm crazy or not. Just throwing that out there.

 

Check out the mad fermentationist blog, all the info you need!

 

If your brewing a Lambic, Can you add dregs from other styles, say a flanders red

 

Yes and no. You can add dregs from almost any sour beer to the fermentation on a "Lambic" style beer with good results, but most Flander's Reds are pasteurized and the the dregs won't do anything since they are all dead. Go to this post on the Mad Fermentationist's blog to see what beers have live bugs you can harvest/use. Very helpful resource, thanks a ton @OldSock

 

I fermented an entire 5 gallon batch with only four bottles worth of Jester King dregs, no added yeast.

3 to 5 bottles should be plenty for biodiversity.

And yeah that's a great book.

 

That really depends on the strains that are in the bottles.
3-5 bottles of, say, Sanctification aren't going to do much for biodiversity.
What flavor profile are you going for? That's the real question.

 

I was going off the ones he named thinking about using in the post I quoted along with yours.

 

I hear ya. I guess the small point that I'm trying to make is the wild yeast and bacteria make-up from a single bottle can have all the biodiversity that you need.

 

Have you began drinking this beer yet? I received a few JK bottles in a trade with the hopes of using some of their yeast/bugs and wanted to know how well the dregs did with souring.

 

I sour'd one of my barrels with dregs from two bottles of Das Uberkind and its making some nice sour beers. The other barrel I sour'd with dregs from a bottle of bam and la roja, this batch is its first beer so it isn't moving as quickly as the Jester King barrel on batch 2 but its souring still. I will probably put some more dregs in the JP barrel.

 

The beer is extremely sour, with the Jester King ester profile from their newer blends with their wild yeast.

 

I've got a sour/wild saison going from dregs and a primary ferment of ECY single strain saison. Has Westbrook/Stillwater Saison brett brux, Wicked Weed Serenity and Malice dregs in it as well.. Has a super nice pellicle on it now and sitting nice and warm in the garage to speed it up.

 

well. i was going to reply, but pretty much this.
I lost my notes in a smartphone upgrade (I thought stuff was sync'ed / backed up in the app I was using but it wasn't) but we did a 3 gallon batch using nothing but dregs and did about a week long starter before brew day (we may have done a couple more bottles). It turned out awesome. The sad part is that it'll never be duplicated / we didn't save the yeast haha.