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Author Topic: Sour Primary Yeast  (Read 2930 times)

Offline rbowers

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Sour Primary Yeast
« on: September 21, 2017, 06:28:39 am »
Looking to brew up the wine barrel sour red recipe in American Sour Beers.  I had originally planned to use the recommended Wyeast 1968 London ESB strain and actually went as far as to get the starter all prepared (1.040 1.5 L on stir plate x 48 hrs at room temp) but now looking at the finished starter it is very cloudy (despite overnight in fridge) and what is normally a nice yeast cake on the bottom of the flask is looking substantially less than normal.  This is my normal process and have never had an issue but also never used this yeast before.  It is described as highly flocculant but seems to be doing anything but that.  Brew day of course is this evening and not many options in near future.  Was going to ferment clean for 5-6 days then transfer with Roselare and some dregs from Russian River bottles I have grown up a bit with small starters the last few weeks.

The wort will be ~1.060, similar to how described in book.  Mash at ~157-158 x 60 min to leave some residual sugars for bugs to work on.

So:
1) Any thoughts on the above yeast starter and its viability?  I suppose I could taste it and take a gravity reading.
2) Back up plan would be to either pitch some Wyeast 1056 I have laying around that was washed from previous batch (I have plenty) or run out and buy another packet of lower attentuating yeast.

The only difference was I ordered the 1968 yeast online, took several days to get here so not sure if it wasn't so viable to begin with.  It is now ~3 months past its original date of packaging.

If I do buy another pack of yeast there will be no time for a starter- is this a concern given the overall plans for this to be a sour beer with lots of highly attenuating stuff pitched later?
If I go with the 1056 should I expect it to be less sour in the end with it's higher initial primary fermentation attentuation or would such a high mash temp likely keep plenty of food (and sour potential) left over for the bugs.

Lots of questions....Thanks

Offline rbowers

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Re: Sour Primary Yeast
« Reply #1 on: September 21, 2017, 06:47:32 am »
Well took a reading and its still 1.040 so basically that yeast was non-viable.  Tasted pretty strange too- not just like sweet wort and certainly nothing like a clean fermenting english yeast strain.  So I won't be pitching that.  I guess I am down to pitch a packet or two of newly bought yeast or pitch the 1056.  Thoughts?

Offline reverseapachemaster

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Re: Sour Primary Yeast
« Reply #2 on: September 21, 2017, 08:54:47 am »
No problems pitching 1056. I'm pretty sure Tonsmeire has used 1056 in the past before pitching Roeselare.
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