I made 4 gal of wort at 1.043 and mixed in 2.5 gal of a previously fermented wort (the other wort has its own thread but I was hoping for the fresh fermentation to clean up some things in the previously fermented wort - I’m going to skip the details but it has its own whole topic and pitched 1 qt of Brett Lambicus starter Sunday evening and another quart of Brett Lambicus starter Tuesday evening. It is now Wednesday evening and I don’t see any signs of fermentation. The primary is being maintained at 67 F. I could pitch some dry yeast that I have on hand but I am interested in alternatives.
Mine took ab about 4 days. Just let it ride, it will take off.
I’m letting it ride. I’m also trying to get the wort up to 70 F.
Brett works pretty slow. Even if you pitch at, say, lager rates (1.5 M cells / ml / ºP) Brett will still take significantly longer than you’d expect. Just sit back and enjoy the ride
Kudos, BTW, on making a Brett starter. I keep hearing about folks that pitch just a vial (~2 B cells from White Labs) and wonder why their ferment isn’t taking off
I came home this evening and the fermentation lock was still not going. However, there was pellicle so I’m good to go now. The two other times I did an all-Brett beer, the ferment had visibly started in about 2 days, but I realize now that I did a relatively smaller pitch this time.
Yeah, a smaller pitch rate and no aeration will slow down brett growth considerably increasing your lag time. Whenever I brew up a 100% (or in your case, mostly 100%) brett beer I always step up my starters a couple times to make sure I am pitching a fairly large population since they grow so slowly. When I do that I typically get normal lag times just like with an ale yeast.