Infecting a barrel- making a starter for the bugs?

[beggarstown brewer]

Hey Army,

Friends and I recently got a 53 gal whiskey barrel for collaborative beers (we each brew 5 gallons of the same recipe, ferment independently, then blend clean finished beer in the barrel to age. We've had great success so far, but have agreed that we don't want an accidental sour, so we're going to infect the barrel intentionally. So, we're thinking of making a Flanders Red that we'd ferment clean, then inoculate with the Roselare blend once the beers are in the barrel, then age a year or so.

I've always heard not to bother making a starter when working with bugs because you'll get more character if you strain them, they are slow growers, etc. All of this advice however is based on 5 gallon batches. Given that we're working with 40-45 gallons, I'm thinking it'd be best to make one. Is there good reason not to? Would growth be very slow with a big starter (or perhaps a stepped up starter) grown on a stir plate? Should we just pick up multiple packs of Roselare?

None of us have dealt with bugs before, so it'd be great if anyone can let us know what's up.

-beggar

[Quin]

Rodenbach uses 10% sour beer when starting a new or recently cleaned tank. I would think you would need to add a smack pack for each 5 gallon batch or 5 gallons of previoulsy soured beer.

Flanders red goes through multiple "fermentations" over the 1-2 years in the barrel. I would think that if you just do a starter, you will mainly get just the Saccharomyces yeast to grow.

[beggarstown brewer]

Aaahhh good call. We'll just buy a smack pack per 5 gallons. Thanks Quin!

[NHBrewer]

I just infected a 60 gallon wine barrel. I am making an Oude Bruin. I was having the same quandary. I ended up adding the dregs from 2 bottles of Earthmonk from Struisse. Fearing that this was not enough I followed Rodenbach and added 3 gallons of Flanders Red I had in a keg that was about 9 months old. This was only five weeks ago and I tried it last week and the barrel was WAY more sour than I thought it would be. I'm sure that it would be no where near as sour as it is now if I had not added the additional sour beer. I have the barrel all the way full to keep the acetobacter down.

NHB