First Funk, thoughts?

So I'm brewing my first funky beer later this week. After reading some stuff over at The Mad Fermentationist I'm going to use BM45 wine yeast to develop the jam flavors and leave a good amount of residual sugar for the bugs to use. I'm going so let that run until primary fermentation is wrapping up, then rack it to secondary. Here's where it'll get a little different.

I am going to be using a bacteria slurry from my father's grain fermentation bucket which has become a primordial soup of various souring microbes and wild yeasts. He ferments dry corn and barley to feed his chickens since it improves digestibility and nutrition. The soup smells like bread and pineapple juice, with a little whiff of butter.

Along with the wild soup I am going to pitch Wyeast brettanomyces lambicus, just in case there isn't a brett species in the slurry so I don't end up with diacetyl bombs due to the pedio that I'm pretty sure is in there.

After this monstrosity ferments out for a few months I'll rack off a gallon into a glass carboy as a control and to free up space for 5 lbs of wild blueberries I picked over the summer. I'll let that run wild as long as it wants too then bottle. I'll also float a small chunk of white oak in the main secondary as a mother culture for my next funk and to give the brett some cellobiose to much on.

Should I go with a traditional lambic grain bill of 6lbs pale malt and 3 lbs of flaked wheat? Should I make it a funky brown and just use munich as my base malt? Crystal seems kind of pointless since the bugs will have a pile of residual sugars after the wine yeast wraps up. I don't have lambic hops, so should I just boil an ounce of crystals for 30 minutes? Just mash hop ala Berliner? Should I boil at all, or should I keep the lacto alive that's in a non-boiled wort to add additional bugs? SO many questions...

lots of questions

Malt bill - up to you, me, I would make both a lambic and a Red/brown

Hops - No need for aged hops, just use a low AA hop and bitter to ~10ibu

Slurry - you might toss it in a small "starter" to see how it ferments wort first and see if you get any nasty off flavors, the butter you smell is most likely diacetyl and adding the lambicus should help to clean that up in the end

Blueberries - I would suggest against deciding in advance what fruit to add, let the beer tell you what would mesh well with it, wait at least 6mos or so and taste it, then decide what fruit to get ahold of

Thee doesn't appear to be any sacch yeast in the slurry, so I can;t really try a starter of it since there is no alcohol to keep evil things at bay. I figured the butter was diacetyl, so needed to make sure I added a commercial brett pitch to clean up.

The blueberries are the only fresh fruit I still have put up from the summer. It just feels off to use commercial fruit when I am trying for a feeling of terroir in the beer using local bugs. If it doesn't seem like it would mesh with blueberry, I guess it'll just stay unfruited.

The BM45 sour red is still aging, but the last sample I had a couple months ago was less than promising. Sort of a weird yeasty flavor to it, still young though, so hopefully it will turn the corner over the next few months.

How far in was it at tasting, Oldsock? Did you get those coveted jam-like flavors in the base beer? Had you ever tasted the off flavor in any other sours or do you attribute it just to the BM45?

Brewed in June, tasted it in December, so it is only 5 months in. When it was young it certainly had some complex berry type flavors. Hard to say exactly what is going on, I've had several sour beers taste off during fermentation, only to come around eventually (although I’ve never had this exact flavor that I recall). I am worried that the kill factor produced by the BM45 is causing a high level of autolysis in the brewer’s yeast.

This one may come around eventually, but it just strikes me as a risky way to brew your first funky/sour beer

Oldsock.

I'm thinking of doing the same type of brew for one of my sours this year.

If you think autolysis is the culprit in your off flavor would it be a good idea to...

Start fermentation on an ale yeast to ferment out maltriose, rack off of the yeast inside of 2-3 days, leaving behind as many rafts as possible. Then pitch the wine yeast and the souring blends together?

Or would it just make more sense to pitch pedio, lacto, wine yeast and Brett and just make sure no ale yeast is getting into it?

Homebrewtastic said:

Oldsock.

I'm thinking of doing the same type of brew for one of my sours this year.

If you think autolysis is the culprit in your off flavor would it be a good idea to...

Start fermentation on an ale yeast to ferment out maltriose, rack off of the yeast inside of 2-3 days, leaving behind as many rafts as possible. Then pitch the wine yeast and the souring blends together?

Or would it just make more sense to pitch pedio, lacto, wine yeast and Brett and just make sure no ale yeast is getting into it?

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I think skipping the brewer's yeast entirely would be the way to go, even clear beer can have 100,000 cells per ml. THe Brett will take care of any sugars the wine yeast does not.

If I remember i'll pull a sample tonight to let everyone know how it is going.

Oldsock said:

I think skipping the brewer's yeast entirely would be the way to go, even clear beer can have 100,000 cells per ml. THe Brett will take care of any sugars the wine yeast does not.

If I remember i'll pull a sample tonight to let everyone know how it is going.

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So that being said what Brett strains do you think would compliment the bm45? I wouldn't think Brett L with the smoky horsey flavors. So A. B. or C?

Also thinking about it that wine yeast would allow for more Brett flavor to come through as the Brett would have more sugars to eat.

Homebrewtastic, that was the original intent in using the wine yeast, to leave behind more residual sugars for the bugs to consume.

I'm actually going to skip the Brett L that I bought and just go with the zoo of microbes in the grain fermentation. It smells amazing right now and just gets better by the day. Pineapple has given way to guava and mango with the butter (I'm assuming diacetyl) already starting to fade. It is in an open bucket so the bugs have access to as much O2 as needed which is probably why it is changing so fast and so often.

I think I'll stick with BM45 as my primary yeast. The theory behind it seems sound. As for risk in using my local bugs, well, you're probably right. Luckily it'll only be about $8 down the tubes if it goes wrong. On the other hand though, if I get half the character in the beer as the grain fermenter has, I'll have something way beyond any expectations, and maybe some new bugs to share that no one has ever intentionally worked with.

Sorry to freak everyone out, drinking a sample now, gorgeous beer. Big jammy/berry/cherry flavor, moderate sourness, subtle funk. Could certainly use another few months, but it is well on its way. Credit to the BM45, and the East Coast Yeast Rodenbugs.

So pretty sure it was sick pedio and not autolysis from dead sacch?

Sick beer doesn't taste off, it is just a weird viscous sort of texture. It may have been some weird intermediary Brett byproduct, or just some extra yeast in suspension (my basement is pretty cold now). Sour beers often go through weird periods, one of the reasons I don't taste them too often (often just serves to freak me out).

Outstanding to hear that... I'm likely to be brewing it up sometime in the middle of next week. Did you get any of the big mouthfeel they talk about with BM45 or have the bugs pretty much eaten through the polysaccharides?

After primary fermentation it had a really viscous thickness at ~1.020. Most of that is gone now, but it did not taste thin. Without taking a gravity reading I'm not sure if it tasted fuller than it usually would given the gravity, but bugs love polysaccharides so I doubt it will make much of a difference.

I was actually reading up on the BM45 on morewine.com and they said that after fermentation is done it can produce "gamey" flavors that can take up to 6 months to clean up.

Homebrewtastic said:

I was actually reading up on the BM45 on morewine.com and they said that after fermentation is done it can produce "gamey" flavors that can take up to 6 months to clean up.

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Interesting, sounds like the answer. Luckily Brett can turn a lot of weird gamey flavors into fun fruity esters as well.

So Oldsock, would you do a Lambic type grain bill or an Oud Bruin?

I brewed up the base beer today. I went with 7 lbs CMC pale ale and 3 lbs of flaked wheat, mashed at 150 and hopped with 1 oz of crystals at 30 minutes for 8 IBUs. OG ended up at 1.052. I tried rehydrating the yeast, but it doesn't really break up the way US-05 does. I stays formed in rods after 3 hours in water with the occasional stir.

I'll let it run for a week or so and rack it off into a Better Bottle with a half liter of the slurry from the grain fermenter.

How long do you guys typically let it run before adding fruit?

Is your primary saccharomyces yeast still viable at that point? I ask because with using a wine yeast I have something better at eating fructose than the usual suspects. I was just wondering if the BM45 would still be around for a secondary fermentation or if it would most likely be pretty well shot.

I think a simple clean lambic-ish grain bill was a good call. Traditionally lambic brewers wait about a year before adding fruit (that way the other bugs eat the added sugars). Brewer's yeast is plenty happy to eat fructose as well, so you should be in a similar position. Plenty of brewers add fruit earlier, but I find the longer you wait the fresher and nicer the fruit character will be in the finished beer.

Brewed mine yesterday. My grain bill was pretty close to a Belgian single from last year that I was extremely happy with. I pitched a packet of Roeselare to get started then tomorrow I'll be pitching the BM45.

This is for 6 gallons.

7lbs. 2-Row - US
2 lbs. 3oz. White Wheat
1 lb. Munich - 10L
1/2 lb. American Crystal - 60L
1/2 lb. American Victory - 10L
1/4 lb. American Chocolate 325L

1oz. Willamette 5.4% AA - FWH

The only differences in the grainbill vs my single is the two row instead of pils. I went that route because from what I've read Vinnie from rr uses two row a little more chocolate malt for more maltiness and a hit of victory for the same reason.

Wow, BM45 is slow to start. I came home from work tonight to finally find krausen. The IBA I brewed the same day with US-05 is already done bubbling and the krausen is already falling.

The BM45 had visibly wrapped up in 5 days, so I racked it onto the bugs one week ago at a gravity of 1.018. The bugs got to work almost instantly, since it came from a continuously fed starter essentially. I took a gravity today and found that the bugs had already chewed through 2 points, although it could have been a little residual from the BM45, not sure. The sample tastes horrendous with a slick, oily mouthfeel and a profile similar to what a pig's kidney smells like after you split it, before you wash it. I have faith that my local bugs will do good things, but I wanted to see just how aggressive they are compared to commercial offerings. Will keep this updated as it progresses.

El_Exorcisto said:

The BM45 had visibly wrapped up in 5 days, so I racked it onto the bugs one week ago at a gravity of 1.018. The bugs got to work almost instantly, since it came from a continuously fed starter essentially. I took a gravity today and found that the bugs had already chewed through 2 points, although it could have been a little residual from the BM45, not sure. The sample tastes horrendous with a slick, oily mouthfeel and a profile similar to what a pig's kidney smells like after you split it, before you wash it. I have faith that my local bugs will do good things, but I wanted to see just how aggressive they are compared to commercial offerings. Will keep this updated as it progresses.

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I have yet to taste mine. I plan to let it go a full six months before I taste it and check the gravity. The bm45 seemed to be done working about a week after pitching, but mine was only 1.050 OG.

What did your recipe end up being?

Opened my fermenter today for a whiff. Nice bit of funk and slight sourness already noticeable in the smell. I noticed a few hours later that fermentation appeared to have kicked back up (bugs responding to oxygen?) with big fat bubbles forming on the top. Been almost a month since brewday.

I pulled a hydrometer sample today, and at a little over to months from finish of primary BM45 fermentation it has dropped 10 points to 1.008. It's lightly sour with subtle notes of pineapples, funky something, and a kind of metallic flavor. Still no pellicle, but some bubbles are always floating on top. I'll be toasting a white oak dowel and jamming it through the carboy bung next weekend. At what gravity should I think about racking off onto the blueberries?

Mine is finally beginning to form a pellicle.



Still no tastes or gravity readings. Going to let it ride for three months before I do either of those.

I cracked the bung on this again today for a taste and gravity. I never formed a pellicle, so I was afraid that it wasn't cooking right... I was wrong. It has dropped to 1.004 and tastes incredible. There is just a bit of a metallic thing on the edges of my tongue with a very smooth sourness and subdued barnyard.

Now my big question... Does it get blueberries or wild black raspberries and is the gravity low enough to make the addition?

Yes the gravity is low enough. I would go with raspberries but the blueberries could be interesting. I hear blueberries are tricky to work with. I believe Cantillon makes a blueberry lambic and had a rough go with the first batch. You might be able to find out what worked for them through a google search.

Anybody have an update? I ended up adding dried cherries about a year ago. I just bottled it about an hour ago. The taste I jut sampled was amazing. Smooth lactic sourness. Light on the funk. Nothing remotely acetic. Great cherry pie like taste. Can't wait for it to carb up.