Oldsock

Recipes 

Apparently the BJCP is considering adding some sort of American Sours category, eventually. I encouraged them to add a 100% Brett style as part of it, with clear guidelines of what sort of flavors to expect.

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Check out The Mad Fermentationist for my adventures in fermentation (cheese, bread, ginger beer plant, and of course plenty of funky beer).

uright

Recipes 

Lots of great information in this thread!

I contacted Whitelabs for some information on wlp644 yesterday. According to John at whitelabs wlp644 is packaged with 50-80 Million cells/ml. Also, that the production date is 4 months prior to the expiration date, just like their standard yeasts.

I recently got gifted two vials that expired in the middle of November that I'm hoping to propagate up to a 5.5g 100% Brett pitch. It's my understanding that a Brett starter will nearly triple it's cell count in 7-8 days. Is that a fair guestament?

It would be great to hear from someone with experience propagating this yeast.

WilliamWS

Recipes 

When making a starter for my RIS that I did a month ago I feel like the 644 worked pretty fast. I left it on the stir plate longer than I normally would for sacc but not 7-8 days, probably more like four days each time I stepped it up.

I never did a cell count but after stepping it up a couple of times I had what seemed to be plenty of yeast for 5gal of 1.094 wort. Fermentation was going crazy within a few hours, it dropped my gravity by 60 points in two days. After a week my RIS was down to 1.027 and over the course of the following 10 days it went to 1.023. It's been stable there for a couple of weeks so I'll probably bottle next week and give it a few months.

bogwart

Recipes 

You should wait and check the gravity over the course of a few weeks. Mine went from a 1.010 after around four weeks to a 1.006 at six weeks. It stabilized there and I bottled it at eight weeks. So, give it some more time.

Coff

Recipes 

Has any experienced long bottle conditioning times with this strain? Ive had my Petite Saison in bottles for 7 weeks now and the beer is low on carb and no tastes a bit sweet, almost under attenuated which I am assuming is the rest of the priming solution bc it was bone dry going into the bottles.

I will admit however, it is a consistent 61f in my cellar atm which i know is a bit cool for bottle conditioning so I expected it to take a little longer but I thought it would be done by now. I grabbed a 6 pack and stuck it in the closet on my 3rd floor which is 72f so I'll give that a week or 2 and check it out.

highgravitybacon

Recipes 

No, in fact I'm thinking I have a series of bottle IEDs waiting. I had a berliner weisse I bottled at 1.004 with some brett in half and no brett in the other half. I drank one of each tonight. The non brett was still a little undercarbed, and kind of sweet. No issues with it, except not very sour. They were about 2 weeks in the bottle sitting on a warm blanket at about 80F.

The brett beer, another story. I knew straight away I had issues when, upon opening, it sounded like someone disconnecting a train car. Massive gusher. Like about a minute. The beer was very mildly funky dry as a bone. So dry the hydrometer just sank right to the bottom of the test cylinder because I didn't put enough sample in. Both were carbed to 3.7 vol with table sugar. People are always saying "Oh, brett produces half the co2 as regular yeast." Bull****. The only difference in the two bottles was the presence of brett. So it's obviously the brett doing it.

WilliamWS

Recipes 

If you packaged in Belgian style bottles or something similar then you're definitely fine.
Anything over 3.25-3.5 makes me nervous in regular bottles, though. IIR, regular bottles max out around 4.5 under ideal conditions but I think we've all seen bottles with flaws and I've heard of cases where they've supposedly gone off under 4.

loctones

Recipes 

Does anyone have any experience using this in secondary? I intended to do an all-brett beer with this, but life got in the way. So, I pitched the vial into a batch of old ale that I've been aging. It's coming up on 5 months now. I took a sample a couple of months ago. The brett definitely did it's thing on attenuation, but not much in the flavor department. The added alcohol from the secondary fermentation made it taste harsh, actually. It definitely needed more time. I'm trying to let it get to 6 months before I take another sample.

dstar26t

Recipes 

Go back to post #81 in this thread for cell counts. Some additional info I'll add that may help you is that on 10/31, I took 2 vials dated November and made a 1.040 240mL starter. It grew up to 104 Billion cells.

I've talked with John at White Labs too and I believe he doesn't have the correct information. He told me the same thing about cell count and expiration date for Brett well over a year ago. I believe they put a 6 month date on their Brett vials versus the standard 4 month. I had a vial of their WLP650 last year that would have been made 1 month in the future using the 4 month rule. All the Brett Trois that was produced this year was made in May which is obviously 6 months from the November date that is on all the vials I've seen, some of which I bought in May.

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Next: Brett Trois Helles, Sculpin clone, Grodziskie
Fermenting: Sauerkraut fermented Gose
Drinking: No-Boil No-Hops Berliner Weisse, Pre-Prohibition American Pilsner, Brett IPA, Biere de Garde, Lambic, Brett Blonde, Kriek, Porter, Saison, Sour Blonde, Barleywine
Barrel aged: BORIS, Barleywine, Tripel, Wee-Heavy

spenghali

Recipes 

Most people don't go over 3 volumes in standard bottles. It also differs a bit by brand, you can get a sense by weighing your different bottles and doing a weight to volume ratio. If you are reusing commercial bottles the maximum pressure will decrease after every use from the stress it goes through (and your new homebrew bottles for that matter).