First time using Brett

So this will be my first time using Brett. I picked up a pack of wyeast Brett b, and my plan was to use it on a tripel that has been bulk aging since April and a saison that I brewed about a month ago. I was going to do a gallon of each in glass jugs. The tripel started at 1.090 (I added 2#’s of sugar during ferementation to get it up to 1.110ish) and it is sitting at about 1.008 now using wyeast 3787 Trappist Hi Gravity. The saison started around 1.065 and is just about at 1.001-2 using 3711. Way lower than I anticipated. I plan on doing a rye saison in a few days and was thinking about adding Brett to a gallon of that. I am even playing with the idea of blending 2 of the beers into a gallon jug and adding Brett to that just to experiment and see what happens. All are 5 gallon batches. The rest of the batches will either be dry hopped, aged on wine or bourbon soaked oak cubes, or left alone.

So for the first question, should I make a starter with the Brett so I can up the cell count to make sure I have enough yeast to add to all the different carboys? There would only be 3 or 4 1 gallon containers. I also wouldn’t mind saving some and keeping a container full of Brett for other batches.

Would there be much of anything left for the Brett in the saison that is down to 1.001? It doesn't really need much right?

When I’m fermenting this upcoming rye saison, should I rack it to a carboy with the Brett before the primary yeast have finished to give the Brett more to work with? Then I could compare it to

Thoughts on a saison/tripel blend?

Thanks for the help

yes, you can make a starter with brett. you could split your single pack between those 3 one-gallon experiments, but why not step up the pack - that will allow you to save some for future use.

brett can eat more than just sugars. they will happily munch on the by-products of sacc's primary fermentation. so yes, there will be stuff for the brett to chew on even in a 1.001 saison.

JHahn said:

When I’m fermenting this upcoming rye saison, should I rack it to a carboy with the Brett before the primary yeast have finished to give the Brett more to work with? Then I could compare it to

Click to expand...

you certainly can, but you don't need to. don't worry about feeding the brett, it will find stuff to eat. it's also very slow acting, at that small a pitch rate. even if you were to pitch the sacc and brett at the same time, the sacc will finish its business (and eat up all the easily fermentable sugars) before the brett gets going. brett needs 3 months, minimum, to do what it does while sacc gets the job done in a week or less.

JHahn said:

Thoughts on a saison/tripel blend?

Click to expand...

could be interesting, but i would only do that in addition to unblended gallons of triple and saison. i'd want to see what they taste like on their own. this will help you decide if you want to add brett to these types of beer in the future. a possibility is to blend at bottling.