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.
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