Brett Starter Expectations?

Growing up the dregs of Sanctication, 100% Brett fermented loveliness from Russian River. I understand there is also a dose of RR's house bugs - so just no Saccharomyces in play.

Can anyone give me some sensory ideas of what to expect?

Gravity is dropping quickly now, but I am getting very little funkiness in the smell - more sherry/cider - consistent with Sanctification. I have also gotten a lot of powdery sediment - looks like yeast. No pellicule or mold, but I doubt that would form this quickly. This sure throws off some carbonation - been flipping the stir bar on to degass a couple of times a day - it foams like mad.

Hoping to do an all Brett fermentation in a few weeks. I would want to step this up at least one more time first.

Does Brett store well in a refrigerator?

i've used sanctification and beatification dregs to brew sours with and they are both hearty and easy to use. i kept a starter in my garage for a few weeks and it did fine, a mason jar with beatification bugs was kept in my fridge for months and made a great beer. my understanding is that the proportions of the various bugs in the mix will be different after you make your starter than what was originally used by russian river but that does not mean it won't be a great beer.

there was one comment in a chad yakobson talk somewhere that has now been codified as HBT law that you leave your brett cultures at room temp between jobs. i have no proof that this keeps them healthier than in the fridge, or that not subjecting them to temp changes is beneficial, or if any temp effect varies species to species, or whatever, but when i have done this with harvested brett yeast cakes between pitches, leaving for a couple months at a cool room temp, they have always started right back up and given a strong ferment. and you'll probably get a nice little pellicle.

I brewed a dunkelweizen about a year ago, and had an extra gallon of wort. Put it in a gallon jug and pitched just the bottle dregs from sancification. Forgot about it for 10 months. Bottle it two months ago and its ****ing wonderful. Very sour and funky, graham crackery brett. Perfectly carbonated when I tasted it at 8 weeks in bottle.

Im sure I could have bottled it sooner, but it turned out great by the time I got to it. I cant remember if theres pedio in there, but I suspect there is. I think as soon as the pedio is cleaned up by the brett you could bottle it up if it tastes good.

I stored the dregs from the original gallon batch for later use.

I am really glad to hear that! I have two 1gal. batches that are a couple of months old, one pitched with Sanctification and one with Consecration dregs. I planned on sampling, bottling, and pitching the cake into another beer next week. Now I just need to figure out a recipe to brew for extended aging with these...any ideas? I'll post tasting notes when I get around to playing with this next week.

Well, pitched a portion of the starter into my failed dunkelwiezen (Grabbed CaraMunich bag during crush instead of my Munich malt bag - and well you can guess the result. 10 gallons of oversweet dark wheat beer - bleh.). Nice coincidence on the wiezen there Nofootbreak. Will also toss in some oak later on.

Fed the remaining starter and will decant it this weekend for storage into sanitized mason jars. A bit of an experiment anyway as I kegged 5g and secondaried the remaining on sour cherries - a honey saison. Washed my hands really well and sanitized everything during and between... hope no accidental transfers.

God bless Vinny Clurzo!