Beer Forum

Is it possible to re-pitch lactobacillus? I am planning on brewing a gose where I will split the wort 75% wyeast 3068 and 25% lacto then blend post ferment. I would like to re-pitch the lacto into a berliner weiss. Should i just follow the same process for collecting and re-pitching yeast?

If I'm reading you correctly, you will ferment 25% of the wort with lacto only, and then harvest this lacto for a BW. That sounds like a viable plan to me. Because lacto is not a terribly hardy microorganism, it might make sense to include a starter before the re-pitch, depending on your alcohol content and final acidity. Also, read into what you need to make the starter to lacto standards, because it doesn't necessarily like the same conditions (e.g. oxygen and temperature) that yeast does, or have the same growth rate. Otherwise, looks good to me.

Does lacto settle out like yeast will? Seems it may be more likely to stay up in suspension, being a much smaller organism...

It doesn't settle as well as yeast, but it does settle some. Crash cooling helps, as does letting it sit undisturbed. If all else fails, just pull a liquid sample and grow your culture up from that.