Using Russian River dregs...do i need more lacto?

Those beers are plenty sour. Those dregs have pedio and Brett. Lacto?

 

I recall hearing that RR uses a clean strain to bottle with. Not 100% sure if that is true or not but it may be worth it to shoot Vinny an email - he is super responsive and very helpful towards homebrewers.

 

Yeah, he tends to use rockpile wine yeast it looks like

https://store-54e42.mybigcommerce.com/bottle-logs/

 

I was going to write in that I thought it may be a wine yeast too but was too fuzzy about that. I assume he uses it due to its tolerance to acidity?

 

http://www.themadfermentationist.com/2010/06/harvesting-sour-beer-bottle-dregs.html?m=1

 

The amount of bugs present would not be nearly as much as if the beer was bottle conditioned with them, I guess just something to keep in mind that it may take longer to notice their effects or you may just want to use the dregs from a larger number of bottles.

 

There is a very big exception to the rule... If the brewer uses a killer wine yeast strain, the wine strain can/will kill off the brettanomyces and any sacch in the bottle. While this doesn't affect the pediococcus, lacto or acetobacter, it might require pitching some extra brett as an assurance.

 

Ignore previous comments about killer wine yeast and brett. It appears that killer wine yeast will only kill things in the same genus, thus certain sacch strains would be susceptible from kille wine strains, but not Brett.

 

You should be good. I have done wild beers with only RR dregs and had good results. Just keep the oxygen out after fermentation is finished, RR has a little too much acetic acid for my tastes, too much O2 and you might end up with more vinegar in there than you would like.

 

Purge with CO2 as much as you can, keep the airlock full, rack slow onto the fruit in secondary with it purged, purge some more. Did I mention purging with CO2?

RR was my birth to sours. I had a taste of one at a local spot and thought it was gross, why would anyone pay $8 for a half glass of that crap. I went to RR and decided to give the whole sour thing a try again, did their entire taster board for $15, and was hooked. I have had quite a few of their sours, including the sour brown they did only for the CBC a few years ago, and beatification. Unfortunately I just get too much vinegar in the finish for my palate. I still drink them when I can, I just don't actively seek them out, and watch how much I use them in my sours.

 

Using a CO2 tank, regulator and some tubing.

 

Put the tubing from your CO2 tank into the neck of the carboy and turn it on at 10 psi or so, flush it, rack, hit it agian, hit it again. At this point I will typically put the bung and airlock on and then send some more through the airlock (s type) a few more times to make sure there is positive pressure in the airlock.

 

So at some point he should purge with c02, right? :-)