Roselare yeast blend question

Does anyone know what Brett strains are in the Wyeast Roselare blend? I just did a turbid mash and pitched a pack of this. Just wondering if I should expect tart cherry, horseblanket, tropical fruit, or all of the above from the Brett strains.

Also, the fermenter bubbled once every 3-4 seconds for a couple of days and now it's stopped. It was a 1.062 OG beer, but the turbid mash should give it a ton of dextrins for the bugs to chew on. Just wondering if this kind of activity is the norm. I know I need to just put it in a closet and wait for 18 months, but I was just wondering.

Cheers!

I got a real krasuen and a very active fermentation from my Roeselare. It was raging in 24 hours, and that was with a direct pitch from the pouch. Yeast was exactly 2 months old (date on pouch). Here's a copy/paste of the fermentation notes from my first Flanders Red:


Very tart for sure. I add tart cherries to my sour beers (reds and browns), so I'm not sure how much of that was the yeast and how much from my fruit. I had a glass of my brown last night (from a keg!). Fantastic. This yeast is a big win.

The brown I had last night was third generation Roeselare. I know the ratio of the yeast and bacteria change over the course of several fermentations, but I'm here to tell you that it still produces a righteously good sour beer. I'm calling it quits at 3 though. I'll start fresh on the next one.

The roesalare blend didn't give me a ton of horse-blanket, but it was definitely fruity. I had a very similar experience with the activity of the yeast, with no airlock activity after ~72 hours.

Also, I would start tasting at ~10 months because you need to bottle/keg when the beer is ready. The temperature where its located will influence the amount of time needed for adequate souring.

Not to hijack your thread but with rosaelare blend did you just leave it in primary the whole time or did you rack it to secondary at any point ?

I just brewed the batch about a month ago, so I'm not really sure what I'm going to do. I'm looking at getting a used wine/bourbon/rum barrel and aging a blend of beers in that for about 18 months. If I find a barrel, I will transfer it and pitch some more wort over the yeast cake. If I don't find a barrel, I'm going to leave it in primary for about a year before doing anything with it.

I emailed Wyeast and they actually told me what Brettanomyces species were in this blend. B. lambicus and B. bruxellensis. Which makes sense because those are the only ones that they have....

Cheers!

To answer the original question about Brett strain. From my several years if experience, I'm pretty sure it is the Wyeast Brett L which gives off an amazing sour pie cherry flavor. Works so well in Flanders type beers.

Aschecte said:

Not to hijack your thread but with rosaelare blend did you just leave it in primary the whole time or did you rack it to secondary at any point ?

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I've gone both ways. Most recently I just pitched a smack pack into primary (no starter) and plan to leave it for the next 12 months. No experience yet with the final product because my first batch is just coming up to its 1 year birthday next month.

BrewNow said:

I've gone both ways. Most recently I just pitched a smack pack into primary (no starter) and plan to leave it for the next 12 months. No experience yet with the final product because my first batch is just coming up to its 1 year birthday next month.

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that's kinda what i want to do as well the less I need to transfer the happier I am. Also with both this and the Lambic blend I recieved a e-mail from wyeast saying that autolysis is not a concern with either blend. The only reason I even question it is that in wild brews Jeff Sparrow says 7 days in primary @68- 8 weeks in secondary@80 and then age up to 3 years at cellar temps.

If you want your beer more sour and funky then leave it on the cake. If not you can transfer it to secondary a little after primary.

I prefer to pitch the Roesalare blend along with a balanced Belgian strain. Especially for your first pitch, you probably won't get the amount of sourness you want if you pitch the Roesalare blend in secondary. I'm on my 3rd pitch over 3 yrs and I still pitch both at the same time and the beer is finally getting to the sourness level I like.

And Bryan Thompson is correct - for more funk leave it on the yeast cake. It just matters what you are going for in the end product.

excellent I'm going for like a ducess de bourgogne type flanders so I guess I should leave it for awhile.

I guess I answered my own question when I emailed Wyeast about the species of Brett in Roselare blend, and this turned into a discussion on what to do with the beers that we all have sitting in this blend.

So, it seems like I need to ask another question along those lines. I was wondering if anyone has transferred about 1/2 of their Roselare batch into a small carboy to age on whatever (fruit, oak, bourbon/whiskey, etc..) and then topped up the original Roselare batch with some fresh wort. I was looking at doing something along those lines because I can't seem to find a used wine/whiskey/rum/bourbon barrel to use as a solera. Just wondering if anyone has done it and what results you had.

Cheers!

I re-pitch on to the old yeast cake and add a bit of Sacc yeast since that has died off in the year between batches.

The solera method will work, but I think you would get better results from keeping batches separate and then blending different aged batches.
For example, every 6 months you could just rack the beer off the yeast into another keg/carboy and then add more wort + Sacc yeast. Within a 2 yrs you would have 4 batches that would give you some great diversity to blend with. Obviously, the downside is you need more carboys and space.

I have a 6.5 gal better bottle Roeselare 'solera' going. Started 10 months ago with Jamil flanders red and 1 pack of Wyeast Roeselare. After 3 months I added 2 lbs of tart Boysen Berries. At 6 months i racked n bottled 2 gal and topped off with 2 gal of fresh flanders red wort. At 7 months i added another 1.5 lb boysen berries and a couple of handfuls of oak cubes cut from a Jack Daniels barrel stave i brought back from Sturgis. Last month (9th). I racked and kegged 3 gals and added 1 gal of a Shakespeare Stout that had been in the fridge for several months and .5 lb cane sugar.
So far it has produced excellent tart complex brews. When it stops doing so, i'll dump it and start fresh.

williams brewing supplies uses this yeast with their extract kit and has a wine yeast to pitch in the secondary.

the more it ages the more pronounced the sour effect. i chose not to pitch the wine yeast and drafted it early.

drafted after a month and it was somewhat dry with a pleasurable tartness.

G.D.51

Just cracked open my first bottle brewed with the roselare, brewed in august 2011 and bottled a week ago. The taste is towards the tart cherry region rather than the dirty horse. When I drew a sample during spring 2012 it smelled good but the flavor was really lacking. 2 months ago the situation was the same, but a month after that some magic had happpened and suddenly it was the best beer I've brewed.

Shift said:

Just cracked open my first bottle brewed with the roselare, brewed in august 2011 and bottled a week ago. The taste is towards the tart cherry region rather than the dirty horse. When I drew a sample during spring 2012 it smelled good but the flavor was really lacking. 2 months ago the situation was the same, but a month after that some magic had happpened and suddenly it was the best beer I've brewed.

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That's great! I think the bugs have different time frames for when they want to work. I've read that it goes in cycles, where one type will produce some kind of flavor/aroma and then another takes over to produce some more complexity. I'm looking forward to tasting my Roselare beer next year sometime.

the good people of roeselare have asked me to be a pedant and correct the spelling of their town name wherever i find it wrongly spelled. it's a busy job on this forum for some reason!! (oe is pronounced 'ooh' btw)

pedantry aside i am working on my first ever beer with roeselare blend, and have really enjoyed sneaking tastes as the flavors change and develop

Aschecte said:

excellent I'm going for like a ducess de bourgogne type flanders so I guess I should leave it for awhile.

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Probably will have to brew a fresh batch to blend with if you are going for something like the duchess. It is much sweeter than most flanders red and most of our home brewed sours will be drying out pretty dam good.