Starter for Roselare?

[pietro]

My friend and I are getting ready to brew a flanders red on his 1/2 bbl system. Ideally , we will end up with his 14 gallon conical completely full and another 5 G fermenter of mine full of flanders for the first ferment (his MLT is actually a full 31.5G and BK is 40 gallon). I want to brew as much of this as we can so we will have plenty to age.

Instead of buying 4 vials of Roselare, would we be able to grow up a starter with one vial, then separate out into 4 secondary fermenters for the +/- 19 gallons of un-soured beer that we will have? Just wasn’t sure if we’d have the same percentage of bugs to ale yeast if we were to let the roselare blend grow.

[mattbrew83]

I could be wrong but from what i heard its not good to make starters for rosealare or stuff like that cause it gives the sacch a head start …I would just pitch multiple packs and spend extra cash for a special beer like that…Hopefully someone with more knowledge chimes in to give better advice…cheers

[tom_sawyer]

The Sacch yeast will bulk up but the bacteria and Brett are slower so you really aren’t changing the amount of those. Really though the sacch is always going to do its thing first, and the Brett and bacteria come behind and have their turns at whats leftover (unfermentable carbs). If you really wanted a good starter you’d make it six months in advance.

I’ve used lambic blend a lot more than Roeselare so I don’t have that much experience with it, it seems that a lot of people don’t find a real sourness developing. If you encounter this, add some dregs from a bottle of commercial lambic. I’ve done this and it will sour up a beer nicely.

[wahoo]

I have made a starter with Roselare before and it’s produced a good beer…
but!
The key to Roselare IME is exposure to small amounts of oxygen… The times I’ve put it in wood barrels, it’s made an amazing beer.

[pietro]

Does it need continuous (low dose) oxygen during the bug ferment or can it have some right at pitching of the Roselare? In other words, if using the two-stage ferment on a sour:

-you chill, oxygenate the wort and pitch the sacc yeast as with any beer
-you rack the almost-completely fermented beer to a new container
-do you oxygenate again? ie add oxygen to partially-finished beer?
-add Roseleare

My thought is that we are going to do a single ferment with the Roselare pitched directly into the wort after chilling as the primary fermentation (no pure sacc yeast). This is the Mad Fermentationist’s method as opposed to Jamil’s two-stage.

[wahoo]

I have done a single stage. Once the primary fermentation is finished (3-5 weeks) I rack it into an oak barrel.

[tom_sawyer]

I would not oxygenate fermented beer. I would simply leave it in a bucket for two months prior to rackign to a carboy. I think this will approximate the microoxygenation effect of barrel aging better than trying to add oxygen all at once. If after a year you find its not sour enough, add some sour dregs. Or better yet bump the Roeselare with dregs from the beginning.

Don’t over-think this, sours are mostly made by putting them away and forgetting them for a year. Its not labor-intensive at all. And the results are always interesting.

[wahoo]

Right, I did not mean to imply in my original post that adding oxygen was at all a good idea. Exposure to oxygen via a barrel or some sort of other permeable container, is what I was getting at.