Maltodextrin Question

Hello Masters of Bacteria and other funky brews. I've started some Lambic Mead. In regards to sugars that regular sacch can't get to; there are none. I plan on using Maltodextrin for the bugs to eat. Here are my questions.

1. How much Maltodextrin will be good per gallon? (these are in two one gallon jugs).

2. I've read that Brett will blow through the maltodextrin before lacto and peddio can get to it. Is that a correct assumption? Or is it a case of just using more?

Edit: Yeast was WYeast Lambic blend, but that unlikely matters.

I have actually had this same plan in the works for while. My idea was to make a bochet and use flanders style bugs though. I was figuring on 15 points of maltodextrin. It will be really interesting to see how it turns out.

is that pounds? for five gallons? or are points a unit I'm not familiar with.

MarshmallowBlue said:

is that pounds? for five gallons? or are points a unit I'm not familiar with.

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Gravity points, as in sugar provides 46 points per pound, per gallon. One pound in one gallon will give 1046.

Ok so roughly 1/3 of a pound. Time to order some and let the bacteria begin its reign of Terror!

MarshmallowBlue said:

In regards to sugars that regular sacch can't get to; there are none.

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how do you know that? what has eaten those "non-sacc" sugars?

sacc always leaves some sugars behind. so if you've only fermented with sacc to this point, there is still plenty in there for brett and other bugs to eat.

adding malto will give the bugs even more to eat, but it isn't strictly required. most (all?) commercial sour beers don't add any malto. they just pitch the bugs after the sacc and let them go to town on the already leftover leftover sugars.

i'm quite new to sour/wild brewing so take this with a grain of malt, but i wouldn't go any higher than 1/3 of a pound. 1/4 pound would be my upper end, but what do i know

You are on the right track. On some of my sours, I give them a maltodextrin addition after about a year. But what I do for ALL my sours, is give the bacteria something that the brett will, for the most part, leave alone. I give them some oak. I use oak spirals, but since you have a small batch, I would take 3-4 oak chips, boil them to try and get most of the oak flavor out, then add them to the jugs. This will give the bacteria something to crawl around on, and also a nutrient source to funk it up.

Aaron

sweetcell said:

how do you know that? what has eaten those "non-sacc" sugars?

sacc always leaves some sugars behind. so if you've only fermented with sacc to this point, there is still plenty in there for brett and other bugs to eat.

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Part of the issue is the that this isn't a sour beer and the only ferment-able source is honey; which sacc can take your gravity down below 1.000. Or do you mean that after the yeast eats "all the sugars" there are different sugars that replaced it as a by-product?

Any which way. I will add some heavily boiled chips (I assume they will need to sit in there for the long-haul so I don't want a ton of oak coming through) as well as ~ .25 to .334 lbs of maltodextrin. Should the maltodextrin also be boiled?

MarshmallowBlue said:

Any which way. I will add some heavily boiled chips (I assume they will need to sit in there for the long-haul so I don't want a ton of oak coming through) as well as ~ .25 to .334 lbs of maltodextrin. Should the maltodextrin also be boiled?

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As much as I sometimes chuckle about this, anything touching a sour beer needs to get sanitized. So the maltodextrin does need to get boiled. Nothing crazy, 5 minutes of a good boil will get you there.

I ended up adding the 1/4 pound. We'll see where we go from here.

I did a brett cider and added 5oz to the 3 gallons. Which would be ~1/2 pound for a 5 gallon batch. Turned out great. FG 0.996

MarshmallowBlue said:

I ended up adding the 1/4 pound. We'll see where we go from here.

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You'll be OK. Let us know how it turns out, although you may have to remind us given the time frame.


Nice blog by the way! Added to my list!

Thanks for reading the Blog! Good to know someone's reading it. I have a sort of brew-log for this in the mead forum, here https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f30/storm-lambic-mead-410764/