Culturing wild microbes

[Waylit]

I made a 1 qt starter from the dregs of RR Santification. I would like to grow these bugs up to have enough for 5 gallons. Do the bugs drop to the bottom after a week or so like Saccharomyces does? Can I dump the beer after a week and add fresh wort to the starter? My concern is that I would be dumping microbes in suspension.

[brewinhard]

A quart starter might be a bit big for the dregs of one bottle. Are you looking to ferment a batch of beer using the dregs in primary or secondary? If secondary, just pitching the dregs as is into a carboy after racking will provide more than effective results given time. If you want to build them up for a primary batch I would give the quart starter at 7-10 days to fully ferment out, maybe even a bit more. Then you could cold crash it for 48 hrs, decant, and pitch more starter wort on top to build the dreg population up. Just beware that making a starter with oxygen in this case could be detrimental to the lactobacillus trying to grow in your starter.