I was recently able to sample a few great funky beers - jolly pumpkin baudelaire io saison, crooked stave surette saison, and crooked stave st. bretta witbier. I ended up harvesting the various dregs and decided to try and grow them up. I made around a gallon of 1.020 starter wort , added the dregs to various jars, and have been swirling them. The JP (brewed with rose hips, rose petals, hibiscus and I’m thinking their typical belgian yeast in the primary and brett in secondary) and St. Bretta (100% brett fermentation [guessing either brett mixture or “house” brett]) starters took off in about 48 hours. The Surette (brett and lacto) has yet to show any visible signs of fermentation after about 4 days.
Has anybody tried to build up Surette dregs before and, if so, what kind of lag time did you have before things started? I’m wondering if the lacto is causing the slow start or if I just didn’t get enough dregs to build up.
