Sour American Blonde

If you pitch the entire contents of a 1.5L Wyeast lacto starter and let it work in the wort alone for a week at 80F, then pitch any type of acid tolerant yeast at the appropriate temperature, you won't have to wait a year for it to become sour. It will be sour and drinkable in two months or less.

I'd drink the Arthur dregs and pitch fresh commercial strains. HF makes great beers, but they aren't using proprietary/magical strains of yeast and bacteria.

 

The proportion they pitched is not the same as what ends up as viable dregs. If wine yeast is in the dregs, you will be using it for primary fermentation which is something HF doesn't do. In fact, no one reputable uses wine yeast for a primary beer fermentation. There must be a good reason for that.

 

Probably not a problem. It only takes a few drops of wine yeast to carbonate a finished beer, so there probably isn't that much wine yeast in the bottle. I've used dregs that contain wine yeast from bottle conditioning and nothing bad happened, but it wasn't the primary source of bugs.

The thing I don't understand here is you want to make a sour american blonde, but you seem determined to use dregs that contain a belgian saison yeast, wine yeast and unknown bacteria. Are you sure Arthur has bacteria? It isn't listed as an ingredient on the HF website. Other beers on their website indicate a strain of brett or they just say bacteria. Arthur is a tart saison, but not a sour. I believe this is achieved with a very low FG and a generous amount of acid malt instead of bacteria. Could be wrong. Just my opinion.

 

@FenderOffset238 If you're looking to brew a tart saison my suggestion would be to brew a saison, mash fairly low to dry it out (say 148F) and toss the bugs along side with the primary saison strain.

This is what I did recently wanting something similar to what you're talking about. The barrel version is at 1.005 now and had a slight tartness. I'm going to leave it for another few weeks and then taste again and see if the gravity has stabilized. As far as the HF dreg version, its in a corny for some secondary aging so I'm not sure where its at right now.

 

I think if you pitch Arthur dregs with a clean American ale yeast, you will make a pleasant blonde beer that won't be sour or funky.

If you want a sour and brett funky blonde that doesn't taste like a saison, all you need to do is pitch Roeselare (wy3763) and wait 9-12 months. If you want sour without the brett funk, then a big pitch of fresh lacto will be sour and drinkable in two months.

 

I've used Temptation with great success, but I don't remember which batch it was, however, it was a few years ago. Other then that I would recommend Cantillon, 3F, Tilquin. Also check out @OldSock list for beers that contain usable dregs.

 

I would go with the Belgians as well. I have used RR in the past, had some good results, always mixed with other stuff, but I also have a brewclub buddy who does lots of RR clones using their dregs and has a lot of acetic (which I get more than I care from in RR sours anyways). If you do use RR be careful of O2 pickup.

 

I just used 2014 Convivial dregs for a fruited cider I made. It got some funkiness and tartness after 2 months like all of HF's saisons. I'm pretty sure Shaun uses a mixed fermentation.

 

Following up to this comment. I brewed a sour blonde aged on golden raisins and sauv. blanc french oak that I fermented using beatification b2 and b5 dregs (cultured into a starter) and it got awesomely sour within 10 months. I then brewed it again using a cup of the cake from that batch and dregs from the latest batch of beatification and its souring even faster. I didnt want to waste that yeast cake so I put a lambic on it and within 3 months it's already very sour. The RR bugs can be pretty damn aggressive,especially when you use them a few generations. I haven't had much acetic character, fortunately, but they really rip your face off!