Dregs Not Working?

[todd46]

Last Monday (May 21) I brewed a pretty straight forward wheat ale of which i put one gallon into a separate carboy. i added the dregs from two bottles of Jolly Pumpkin La Roja to that (one that day, a second 3 days later after giving it a 12 hour start in a light DME/yeast nutrient mix). i have had zero activity in this 1 gallon experiment. am i just being impatient, or should i have done a proper starter on these dregs? i was under the impression i could just pitch them in and let them go to town (both JP bottles were fairly young, one Oct 2011 and the other Jan 2012), but there are no signs of it doing anything (for better or worse).

Thoughts? Advice?

 

[daksin]

even for one gallon, two bottles worth of dregs is almost no yeast at all. They are going to take a long time to reproduce, and they're going to be pretty stressed out when they finally get around to fermenting your beer. Next time, try stepping them up a few times in progressively larger starters so you can use a workable amount of yeast. Even the 12 hours you gave the second bottle probably didn't result in many more cells than you started out with.

 

[BigBill]

I used JP dregs in my secondary (to infect w/ Brett) and I didn't see anything for a long time. I think it look about a month before I saw anything....

 

[todd46]

cool, thanks. i've got two bottles of JP Cinco Anos (limited edition plum sour), one of which will be cellared and the other drank this weekend. i'll use the dregs from that as well (which is even fresher than the previous La Roja bottles) and step them up a few times like suggested and see what happens