ECY020 (Bug County) lag times...

Ok, total (sour) n00b question here, but how long does Bug County take to get going? And (again n00b), how does it behave in the fermenter? Krausen? Airlock jumping? Slimy, viscous looking on top?

A bit of background; last week I brewed up my second Flanders red/brown recipe and pitched a bottle of Bug County (thanks TNGabe, you rock!). My first FR was with Wy Roeselare and the sacch ferment kicked off in hours, and ~1 month later I'm beginning to see signs of a pellicle forming. This second one, I pitched 020 Tuesday afternoon, and still nothing. I was told by a friend who brews a lot of funk that he had a 72 hr lag with 020 before seeing any activity. I'm about 90 hrs from pitch and the middle piece of the airlock (I know...) hasn't even floated and there's very little (if any) change in the appearance of the wort. I have noticed over the last 36 hrs that the wort has become cloudy and a few (like 4 or 5) little white "rafts" have appeared on the top. It also may be a bit more viscous (in appearance) that when I first pitched. It's at 68º. I will be taking a gravity reading on it later today, but I'm not sure if I'd see much of a change in SG at this early stage, even if the bugs are working.

My thoughts/choices.... 1) Let it ride, RDW, blah, blah. I'm trying. 2) Pitch the pack of Roesealare that I have for a sour pale and forget about ECY020 fermenting this batch. I don't wanna do that, I'm pretty happy to get a chance to use this blend and it's not the easiest to source. 3) Siphon some of the Roeselare cake (I also added several different dregs to this batch after the sacch ferment). Again, this'd kill the Bug County, which I'm hesitant to do.

What say you?

My experience with ECY sour cultures was that a little heat goes a long way. If you put a brew belt or similar you'll have a fermenting sour beer.

Also want to add that you'll only really need the heat for like 24-48hrs then you can remove the heat.

I had about a 3 to 4 day lag on mine. I'd warm it up to 70-75. I never got a vigorous fermentation, but it's still chugging away at 50 in the cellar now.

I agree. Warm it up homes. I got the same white rafts popping up more and more on mine and I'm at 72.

She's warm (~70 ish) and beginning to show sings of life. I should know better, but it's hard to not worry.... Janitor, you're certainly no help either, what with trying to make a sour pattern develop or something...

Thanks for the info, guys!!

Went back and looked in my notes. Looks like 9 days before mine started bubbling, pellicle formed after 4.

I used ecy20 it took about 5 days to really get started but soured quickly. Very nice flavor will use it again.

This is day six and I think things are progressing nicely....

I did a stir starter with ECY20 to step it up for a 12 gallon batch. When I pitched my starter in the evening, I woke up the next day to plenty of activity. It very much resembled a typically aggressive sacch strain (e.g. 001) for the first couple of days with a lot of krausen, etc., and then all of the krausen dropped out completely on the 3rd day. Eventually a pelicle formed to let me know that there were other bugs in culture. The resulting beer was quite sour after I checked in months later.

Yeah I used that same stain in a tart of darkness clone. After only about a month it was pretty darn sour! And yes I also had about a 3-4 day lag time but the vial was a month or two old at that point.

jtejedor said:

Yeah I used that same stain in a tart of darkness clone. After only about a month it was pretty darn sour! And yes I also had about a 3-4 day lag time but the vial was a month or two old at that point.

Click to expand...

Yeah, this bottle was from Nov. or something. I thought about doing a starter to build up numbers, but I've read that that'll throw of the ratios in the blend. I figured letting them fight it out in the fermenter instead would produce more complexity.

NordeastBrewer77 said:

Yeah, this bottle was from Nov. or something. I thought about doing a starter to build up numbers, but I've read that that'll throw of the ratios in the blend. I figured letting them fight it out in the fermenter instead would produce more complexity.

Click to expand...

That was my thought as well.

I've got to say I'm proud I've made it three months without tasting mine yet. Figure with at least 9 months to go and since I'm leaving it on the lees, no reason to bother it.

Other folks have chimed in with the same info I have to offer, but with every bug mix I have used from ECY they have had a decent lag time. The first time I used Bugfarm it was over 48 hrs, I stuck the fermenter on a heating pad and it starting ripping away in an hour.

As far as having an older vial and making starters with these blends, what you could do if youre too concerned with throwing the blend off (which doesnt concern me) is just make a starter from half the vial and build that up then pitch your starter and the other half of the vial into your wort.

Just to update, a few days after my last post I had a very active ferment going. Wort churning, airlock going nuts, etc. So fast forward to yesterday, one day shy of a month since brew day and I took a sample. Sour as bless, really tart and funky, gravity around 1.010 so it's still got a ways to go, but I'm really pleased so far.

NordeastBrewer77 said:

Just to update, a few days after my last post I had a very active ferment going. Wort churning, airlock going nuts, etc. So fast forward to yesterday, one day shy of a month since brew day and I took a sample. Sour as bless, really tart and funky, gravity around 1.010 so it's still got a ways to go, but I'm really pleased so far.

Click to expand...

Tasting already? There won't be any left in a year and a half. Just wait til it gets sick from the pedio and you taste it. Haven't tried my BugCounty beer yet, but have tasted some ECY02 and WLP665 beers that the pedio was really kicking in.

TNGabe said:

Tasting already? There won't be any left in a year and a half. Just wait til it gets sick from the pedio and you taste it. Haven't tried my BugCounty beer yet, but have tasted some ECY02 and WLP665 beers that the pedio was really kicking in.

Click to expand...

Just to get a base, I don't plan on sampling much for awhile now.

NordeastBrewer77 said:

Just to get a base, I don't plan on sampling much for awhile now.

Click to expand...

Well give it a taste when it looks sick, just so you can say you havr

TNGabe said:

Well give it a taste when it looks sick, just so you can say you havr

Click to expand...

Its not a sure thing it will get sick but a sick beer a a frickin wicked thing to look at taste can br fine on it but look like snot. I wouldn't worry about you temps for future they were fine. You got a portion of a cake do no way to tell what you had for bugs/Sach etc..