In my opinion, the homebrewer with the most expertise brewing wild/sour ales is Michael Tonsmeire who hosts an excellent and active blog, the Mad Fermentationist. He has done 100% Brett beers, lambics, and commercial sour clones, to name a few. Most importantly, he has documented all his experience to share with homebrewers and his articles on Brettanomyces brewing and brewing sour beer at home are required reads for any homebrewer stepping into the world of sour ales. His blog site is my goto resource for homebrewing wild yeast at home.
My experience in homebrewing wild beers is close to none – I have one Flanders Red ale in secondary happily souring away. However, I do not yet have the experience of multiple wild sour ales under my belt. My plan is to brew as many wild ales as I can while culturing different forms of Brett and other bacteria from commercial examples. Once my experience has increased, I plan on merging what I’ve learned and grown in the lab to homebrewing at home.
In my last post I mentioned that I was making two starters for an all Brettanomyces brew. I purchased a packet each of Brettanomyces bruxellenis and lambicus from Wyeast to culture them on media selective for wild yeasts (results forthcoming) but used the starters for making this beer. The goals of this brew were as follows:
- 100% Brettanomyces.
- Pale in color and low in gravity.
- Fast fermentation time.
The idea is to make a wild ale as quickly as possible, hopefully the brew is done in two months which is very fast for Brett beers. I do understand that there will be less complexity from the yeast this way, but I purposefully want to know what the profile of a quickly fermented Brett table beer is like. I made the starters like any other yeast starter.
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- 100 g of DME in 1000 mls of water
- pinch of yeast nutrient
- packet of Brettanomyces
- placed on a stir plate at room temperature
I counted exactly how many cells were in each pack from Wyeast; Brett L: 53 billion and Brett B: 68 billion. The packs that I bought were 4 and 3 months old respectively so with viability playing a factor I would say that Wyeast prepares around 100 billion cells in the Brett packs. I’ve read on a few forums that Brett starters tend to grow slowly, but this was not the case in my experience. Not much activity on the first day but by the second day, starters look confluent and full of cells with classic Pellicles that stuck around despite the solution being stirred. Both starters had a very agressive aroma. Brett L smelled strongly of pears, sour fruit, and strong esters while Brett B was extremely horsey, goaty, and had alot more funk.
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After counting I had 435 billion cells for Brett L and 185 billion cells for Brett B. Under a microscope, Brett B cells looked rather different and were difficult to count, I would not be surprised if my numbers are actually higher. Brett B cells are more elongated, smaller, and clump together more than Brett L. However, Brett L yeast cells look very similar to regular Sacchromyces yeast and counting is more accurate. 500 billion yeast cells is more than enough for a low gravity beer and I’m not sure if overpitching is a concern here.
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The recipe (5.5 gallons):
- 6.0 pounds of Pilsner malt (Weyerman)
- 1.0 pound of White Wheat malt (Briess)
- 2.0 pounds of Vienna Malt (Briess)
- 0.5 pound of Caravienne (20L)
- 0.5 pound of Acidulated Malt
Mashed the grist with 1.5 qts/pound of grain of water at 149°F and held at the temperature for one hour. Raised temperature to 167°F for mashout and batch sparged as usual. Collected 6.5 gallons of wort at a gravity of 1.036. Boiled for one hour:
- 1.0 oz of Czech Saaz at 60 minutes (13 IBUs)
- 1.0 oz of Czech Saaz at whirlpool
- 1 Whirlfloc tablet at 20 minutes
- 1/2 tsp of Yeast nutrient at 20 minutes
Cooled by whirlpooling to 70°F and pitched both starters, spent wort and all. Unfortunately I did not have time to crash the yeast out of suspension and had to pitch the whole thing. Hopefully the character from the starter is minimized but this may crop up in the finished beer. This beer will be fermented at room temperature which means actually fermentation temps will be higher – 77°F to 80°F.
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OG: 1.043
IBU: 13
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6/5/11: Brewday. Check above details for notes
6/6/11: 16 hours post-pitch and fermentation has taken off like a rocket. In the evening, krausen is starting being expelled through the blow off tube.
6/7/11: There is so much yeast coming off the krausen I needed to replace the growler collecting my blowoff.
6/8/11: Activity is starting to subside and switched to an airlock.
6/14/11: Activity completely ceased two days ago with no gas evolution as the partial pressures of CO2 in the beer and outside has reached an equilibrium. The beer is nearly opaque with Brett and will need some time to clarfiy. Yeast krausen has fallen away but left what seems like a pellicle mixed with trub and hop debris.
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The brew sounds good. I’d be interested to see how the batch turns out with the low gravity. When brewing such a low alcohol beer it’s a good idea to mash high especially with the Brett primary fermentation as consideration should be taken in for the lack of mouthhfeel attributed from the Brett yeast.
At Crooked Stave we are doing lots of primary fermentation and I’m usually hitting 78% attenuation within 7 days on a 14 Plato or 1.056 gravity beer. Usually have 82% within a few days after that. It’s all about using the right Bretts for primary and pitching with the adequate amount of cells. Right in between an ale and lager pitching rate, so 1.25×10^6 cells per ml per degree plato for the first pitch seems to work well.. Second generations really rock and the pitch rate can be lowered. I saw a 1.090 gravity Brett porter ferment out in 10 days recently. Complexity is there but always continues to improve in the bottle and over time.
Cheers to your project it’s a fun read!
Chad
Hi Chad!
Thanks for great comments! I didn’t think about mash temperature and yes I’m sure you’re correct about the beer going to be to thin – I should have mashed higher. I’ll let you know how the brew turns out and at the very least this will be a good learning experience for me.
After three days most fermentation activity is starting to slow down. With a big healthy pitch of Brett, I don’t see any reason why an all Brett beer needs weeks to finish. Of course aging and souring is a different issue, but if one is looking to for a high and quick production of Brett beer I think it can be done. After checking at Crooked Stave, seems like your doing exactly that!
I have a bunch of questions for you, so I’ll shoot you another email later today.
Thanks again for your comments and looking forward tot he brews coming out of Crooked Stave!
J
Great project! I’m currently fermenting a saison which I simultaneously pitched Wyeast 3724 and White Labs Brett B. Of course, the wretched 3724 did it’s normal thing after 2 days and I had to warm to near 90, but it’s slowly doing it’s thing.
I’m also would like to do a 100 pct Brett beer and I’m thinking of doing it to a piney American Pale Ale recipe I’m working on. I want to brew this APA straight up with Sacchro. fist to ensure I’m working with a good base recipe. We’ll see how it comes out!
So the brew has been in primary for about one month now and it was done two weeks ago. Went from 1.043 to 1.003 in under two weeks. Interestingly, the beer doesn’t have much in the way of sourness. A very slight funk, but clean and refreshing. Like a really good rustic Saison.
If you wanted to go 100% Brett, dry-hopping would be great!
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Particularly well executed read!
You are indeed right on this blog post!!
Jason, if you kept any of this around, how did it change as it aged?
Hi Mark,
So I have a six pack of this beer left that I am going to age. I tried another bottle last night (now 6+ months old) and it is still very similar to the original. However, there seems to be more esters. The beer seems to be getting fruitier over time. The beer isn’t getting funkier, but only time will tell.
The original gravity is quite low and the beer finished very dry. There might not be much residual sugar for Brett to chew on, but we shall see.
Jason,
I’ve been playing around with 100% brett beers myself and it seems my first experiences are very similar to yours. After 6 months with WL-Brett B I have a slightly estery fairly clean beer. I think the reason for this is when Brett is doing all the fermentation (reduction) it ends up not playing a major secondary role (oxidation to acid-ester).
Jeff Sparrow mentions that Peter Bouckaert will take some of the first running, add Lactobacillus to it, and then add it back in at the end of the boil. I plan on trying this approach this weekend. Previously I did get nicer results with upping my acidulated malt (1lb vs 0.5lb). The extra lactic acid appears to help the Brett ‘switch gears’, maybe just by giving it a handel to begin esterification and oxidative processes.
Thanks for the website!
You know I have my own theory on this. Oxygen.
In the presence of O2, Brett is an acid producer. However, at anaerobic conditions, it behaves like a very clean Belgian ale with lots of phenolics. Its funny how when you look at BA reviews and find that most of 100% brett beers have poor ratings simply because they expected something wild, funky, and sour.
When I run my brett samples as a starter, they are continuously aerated and sour/funky as hell.
So here is an experiment I want to try (simple wort fermented with 100% Brett):
1) no oxygen (negative control)
2) stirred (continuous aeration – positive control)
3) O2 12 hrs post pitch (pp)
4) O2 24 hrs pp
5) O2 48 hrs pp
6) O2 96 hrs (four days) pp
The goal here is to determine at point Brett will produce acid and when oxidation and staling will start.
I do hope you get the chance to run this. The results would be interesting. I’d have to mull around these ideas a bit before I can make a clear hypothesis. What temperature would you run them at? From my experience and reading, the ‘wild’-er flavors come from prolonged cool fermentation.
I’m not certain I understand ( or maybe agree?) with your theory on anaerobic conditions leading to a clean beer. Brett, in the presence of lots of oxygen and simple sugars, it ferments very quickly and cleanly. When used in secondary, the environment is mostly lacking oxygen and most of the simple carbs are all gone. So you get yourself in a stuck position, lots of oxygen & sugar -> quick clean fermentation. Lack of oxygen retards the oxidative formation of esters and acids and will also retard primary fermentation. The barnyard funk must come from that little bit of O2 that sneaks through the staves and is activated by lack of simple sugars and an abundance of autolysed yeasts and complex carbs.
As a homebrewer and graduate student, I don’t have access to barrels…maybe a very small puff of O2 every few months would work out.
Well, as always, I’m rambling a bit and not certain how accurate my statements are. Thanks for the reply and for all the information you give out!
Ryan
I agree with you 100%.
Simple sugars, limiting oxygen makes a very clean beer. I’ve done this several times now with wonderful results.
I also agree that storage over a long period of time would also lead to wild/sour production. My gut instinct tells me this has something to do autolysis – but this is purely a guess.
You are right in that in secondary there is limiting O2, therefore time may play a factor here.
All I know is when I make a stirred starter in the lab (no bacteria present) using a Brett strain isolated from Cantillon, that spent wort smells like sweaty gym socks dipped in vinegar…
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