WLP670

Ingredients
1

Looking to do the Tank 7 Clone recipe on AHA website and want to use the WLP670 Farmhouse Blend yeast.  Couple of questions:

  • Is it appropriate to do a starter with this blend or will that throw off the ratios of yeast within the blend?
  • If no starter, is it best to buy 2 tubes of yeast instead or will underpitching create some of the more interesting flavors this beer may benefit from?  OG fairly high at 1.072
  • Thoughts on conditioning time with this yeast after fermentation?  Some reviews seem to suggest it really comes alive if given an extra 2 months or so post-fermentation.

thanks

2

There’s a lot of theoretical debate on wild blend starters. I think if bottle dregs will maintain continuity through being propagated, why not a starter? I have had the best luck with wild blends by just pitching an active starter, just like all of my other beers.

3

I would add to a starter and get it going and pitch the active starter.

4

But will it?  I dunno.

5

It’s probably safe to say that the only way to ensure you maintain the exact same proportions would be to not use it, leave it in the original package… because as soon as you pitch it to wort it will begin to change. They all reproduce at different rates, or so I’m told. Some of this is flying by the seat of your pants.

6

This is me but I would buy two tubes and pitch them both. My last experience with bugs and building up a culture went pretty well though.

I think the thing about Brett is that it takes a while for it to really be active. I feel like if you pitch one tube your farm house strain won’t be able to attenuate fully, but that won’t really be a problem because slowly the Brett will finish the beer. You may not come out with a really good farm house base for your beer though.

If you make a starter I think the farm house yeast will be able to do the job, but the Brett will also be there. You could try this and probably have similar results to pitching two tubes.

I have a mixed fermentation I am currently fermenting that is less than a month old.  It is already in secondary and the pellicle is starting to form. I used 3711 from 2 bottle dregs with two Brett strains, lacto, pedio. I tasted the beer when I transferred it into secondary and it definitely taste like 3711 and Brett, surprisingly, but the sour bugs hadn’t really done much yet.

Good luck.

7

I make starters for sacch/brett blends all the time. The starter is to ensure you have enough healthy sacch to complete fermentation. Since brett doesn’t need any gravity points to do its thing, you want to ensure you don’y end up with a brett bomb (assuming balance is the key here). It’ll go to work on the phenols and byproducts of the sacch fermentation.

8

You could always try starting with two vials and make a vitality starter out of them. I have been doing this mostly with my beers to great success.

  1. After the mash has runoff into the kettle. Collect an extra 400-500 mL of wort from the mash tun.
    2.  Boil it for 5 min.
  2. Quickly chill it down and transfer to a sanitized mason jar with your yeast in it.
  3. Put the lid on and shake the living crap out of it.
    5.  Let it wake up and get active while finishing your boil and chilling.
    6.  Pitch it into your fermenter and SMILE!

This technique works well because now you are pitching active, healthy yeast into your wort to quickly uptake any oxygen that you added during aeration. Gets the fermentation off to a quicker start as well.