A few months ago I sent Jeff Mello a sample of the House Saison culture Ive been repitching since 2014. Surprisingly he pulled out a pretty similar set of microbes (in terms of species anyway) to what I started with. Served the test batch I brewed with the second pitch he sent over next to my somewhat similar Dark Saison 8 (fermented with my original culture) at the BYO Sour Beer Boot Camp in Santa Rosa over the weekend. General consensus was that they had pretty similar fermentation character, although the DS8 was brewed a few months earlier.
To answer a few common questions:
1. It started as cultures from four sources, but I honestly have no idea how closely related to their original source the microbes Jeff pulled out are. It ran through my sour gear for two years, easily could have picked up other microbes along the way, or simply drifted.
2. The Lacto is pretty wimpy, it won't make a sour beer with typical saison hopping.
3. I generally reserve some from primary to repitch, and it seems to have hit a nice equilibrium. I did harvest from kicked kegs, likely part of the reason the attenuation is so high.
4. Shipping is US only for now.
Pre-orders are available until March 5th.
If you use it, please post a comment and let me know how it turns out. I'm looking forward to learning more about how the blend does under a variety of conditions!
To answer a few common questions:
1. It started as cultures from four sources, but I honestly have no idea how closely related to their original source the microbes Jeff pulled out are. It ran through my sour gear for two years, easily could have picked up other microbes along the way, or simply drifted.
2. The Lacto is pretty wimpy, it won't make a sour beer with typical saison hopping.
3. I generally reserve some from primary to repitch, and it seems to have hit a nice equilibrium. I did harvest from kicked kegs, likely part of the reason the attenuation is so high.
4. Shipping is US only for now.
Pre-orders are available until March 5th.
If you use it, please post a comment and let me know how it turns out. I'm looking forward to learning more about how the blend does under a variety of conditions!