Allagash Brett Strain

I just drank a very nice bottle of Midnight Brett from Allagash. Their website says it's an all Brett fermentation ale with their "house" Brett strain. I'm curious if anyone has any experience with this strain. I saved the dregs, and would like to do something with them.

Get em in a light starter wort and shake em up!

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I beleive the only beer that Allagash does not filter is their White. I don't believe you have their Brett in those dregs

Edit: let me clarify. They filter out the brett and repitch a clean yeast for bottle refermentation. This was explained by Rob Tod on "The Session" a few years back
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TychoBrahe said:

I beleive the only beer that Allagash does not filter is their White. I don't believe you have their Brett in those dregs

Edit: let me clarify. They filter out the brett and repitch a clean yeast for bottle refermentation. This was explained by Rob Tod on "The Session" a few years back
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I've listened to the interview several times and I don't think that's the case. IIRC, he said that at the time they only used one sacc strain and one brett strain at the brewery. Filtration or centrifugation isn't capable of entirely removing any yeast, which is why some breweries choose to flash pasteurize their products, although Allagash does not. They do use a bottling yeast, so if OP grows up the dregs, they will not contain just the brett strain.

From what I know about centrifuging beer and filtering beer (a decent amount), there is brett in this beer. With this being a dark beer they likely do not send it through a DE filter or a plate and frame cellulose sheet filter. They may but most likely not. They likely just spin the beer through the centrifuge at a fairly high throughput just to get heavy yeast load and protein out of the beer. Then the beer is probably bottled using a bottle conditioning system that has a small yeast prop system that they brewhouse will periodically feed and it will just likely contain their house yeast. So there is very likely brett in there.

Also you can completely remove yeast from beer through centrifugation/filtration. It just depends on how you do it. If you centrifuge the beer then send it through a small micron cellulose sheet filter you will remove yeast and protein. This is how you get the clearest beer. If you're removing chill haze proteins and other proteins from the beer you are certainly removing yeast which tend to measure in the 10 micron size. Proteins are much smaller so if they're getting pulled out, the yeast certainly is getting pulled out.

I live about 5 min away from Allagash. I'll just see if I can get a slurry, I heard one of the other brewers in our club got some. I also have 1.5 ml tubes I can send it out samples if anyone is interested.

EDIT: They do not give out slurries, the other guy had just cultured it from a bottle.

I'd love some slurry if it's the pure Brett. I'm disappointed that folks think there is likely Sacc in these dregs.

I would love some of the brett if you can acquire some!

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This might be of interest...seems like Jeffrey Crane took dregs from an allagash bottle with interesting results. http://jeffreycrane.blogspot.com/2010/08/dreg-series-belgian-single-sour.html?m=1

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I just put some dregs from Midnight Brett into 250ml, so hopefully it's Allagash's house Brett (a tour I took this summer said they harvested it from their coolship).

I did tweet at Allagash today and they responded that there were no other bugs or sacc in. Hopefully that means bottling too.(so far my starter smells like my Brett Trois).

If someone gets a slurry from them I'll happily trade some beers for a sample for your trouble.

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So I went out there, they don't do slurries anymore. Midnight brett is the house strain, I have a few friends who are higher ups at the brewery. I got a few bottles and plan to culture it.

Chugach, where you able to confirm if this was all brett or a mix of sacc and brett?

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The person i spoke with was not particularly informative. I have a couple friends who are on vacation but more involved and the brewery, I plan on speaking with them when they return. I get the sense that it was bottle conditioned with their non brett house strain, although there is still Brett in the beer from the original fermentation, they do not pasteurize it or anything like that.

I was getting a heavy Brett C aroma/taste from Midnight Brett

ChugachBrewing said:

The person i spoke with was not particularly informative. I have a couple friends who are on vacation but more involved and the brewery, I plan on speaking with them when they return. I get the sense that it was bottle conditioned with their non brett house strain, although there is still Brett in the beer from the original fermentation, they do not pasteurize it or anything like that.

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Send me a sample of this. Thanks in advance.

m00se said:

I was getting a heavy Brett C aroma/taste from Midnight Brett

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I had a cold when I tried Midnight Brett, but it definitely reminded me of the 'porters' I made with WLP645.

It's similar (lots of fruit). But Allagash is way more citrus heavy instead of the tropical flavors you get with Brett C. The Golden Brett, which is the same strain, tastes like lemonade.

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Dr neato, if that is your real name, are you requesting a bottle or just a slurry sample from my new set of yeast distribution equipment?

ChugachBrewing said:

Dr neato, if that is your real name, are you requesting a bottle or just a slurry sample from my new set of yeast distribution equipment?

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The latter would suffice, many thanks.

Any way I can help, Doctor. Expect your authentic slurry within the month.

See here for a further question re this yeast:
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f127/mixed-sacc-brett-fermentation-timeframe-454890/#post5840239

Why did you assume it was Brett/Sacc?

We know it is 100% Brett fermented. The question outstanding is what they do for bottling. Have you looked under a microscope? Talked to anyone at the brewery? Eager to get a resolution to what is in this starter (although smell, taste, and wishful thinking point to just brett).

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The presence of Brett only in the bottle would likely depend on how exactly they bottled the beer, and how much they trust the CIP and their fillers ability to be properly cleaned. They could have hand bottled it like FV14 or whatever the one sour was.

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I fermented a very low gravity saison recipe (with spelt) with these stepped up dregs. The flavor is kind of flat, honestly. I racked it to secondary yesterday (just to get the fermenter back and get access to the yeast cake), and put some of the other half of the wort, that was fermented with a saison strain (Wyeast 3726-farmhouse) onto part of the cake. I'll let the sit for a while to see what I get.

Final word... Everything is bottle conditioned with the house strain. They do not give out samples/slurries at all.

Sorry, I'm confused: house strain if Sacc or house strain of brett? Put another way, was there any Sacc in the dregs?

Thanks so much for checking.

Brett strain in the primary.
House strain (same used for all non sour beers) in bottling. House strain is sacc, non-brett, and secret.

Thanks!

Double

I'd hugely love a sample if you can still pull it off, I'd happily pay for shipping and materials, maybe send something interesting your way too.

They do not provide samples of their house yeast, it is the one strict rule they have. Top secret on all accounts. A cultured sample from Midnight Brett would be a blend of house and (hopefully) brett. I'm happy to share the one I've been culturing.

I'd share, too. It's a solid culture and has fermented out a beer (very low OG, so no worries) so one or the other of the Sacc or Brett is active. I'm using some for a secondary ferment right now, but no notes on that. PM me.

I was searching for some info on this yeast, and stumbled across this thread. Given that we're talking about Brett here, it seems appropriate to bring this thread back from the grave. Since 2014, have any of you gotten anything interesting from these dregs over the long term?

It sounds like there's house Sacc and likely rogue Brett. It also sounds like everyone who's cultured the dregs are reporting that it attenuates strongly, but is relatively bland. Has anyone maintained these cultures? Or has anyone stepped up cultures from old bottles, when the Brett has a better likelihood to be the more viable microbe over the Sacc?

I'd picked up some bottles of the 2015 Golden Brett and Midnight Brett while I was recently out in Maine, and I cultured up the dregs from one bottle of the Golden. I cultured about 100ml of dregs in 250ml of about 1.025 starter wort. I stepped it up to about 1250 ml a few weeks ago. It smelled good when I stepped it up, but I haven't smelled or tasted it since. So, I wonder if the quart of starter beer I have is interesting or not. I might have to taste it and see if it's worth refeeding or not.

I like their Brett strain since it tends to be on the fruitier side. I use it in a house Brett culture that I've propagated from any 100% Brett beer or Brett saison that was on the fruitier side. It's mostly drie, brett c, and allagash dregs. My house culture does well on 100% ferments and secondary. It pairs especially well with dry hops.

Maybe I have something to contribute here.

I recently isolated/cultured yeast from the dregs of Allagash Interlude. It is fermented with sacc and brett, and bottle conditioned. There were two distinct strains on the plate I made. One had perfect round shapes, and the other was more globular. Looked at both under a microscope, and the more globular colony resembled images of brett I looked up online. The cells were ovoid, but more elongated than the spherical shaped colony. The globular colony also formed pseudo-hyphae much more than the other colony. I also believe it to be brett since it took several days to appear on the plate. It is definitely yeast and not bacteria.

I cultured it up to a 2L starter and have since pitched it into a 5 gal batch. Again, there was some significant lag time. I know this is purely anecdotal, but the starter really smelled like interlude. Fruity, funky, and barnyard like.

Maybe I haven't actually captured THE Allagash brett strain, but we'll see. I can post updates if anyone is curious. Hopefully it forms a pellicle and the evidence will be clear.

After the initial plating of the bottle dregs, I replated the globular colony. This is that plate:

Brewddah said:

Maybe I have something to contribute here.

I recently isolated/cultured yeast from the dregs of Allagash Interlude. It is fermented with sacc and brett, and bottle conditioned. There were two distinct strains on the plate I made. One had perfect round shapes, and the other was more globular. Looked at both under a microscope, and the more globular colony resembled images of brett I looked up online. The cells were ovoid, but more elongated than the spherical shaped colony. The globular colony also formed pseudo-hyphae much more than the other colony. I also believe it to be brett since it took several days to appear on the plate. It is definitely yeast and not bacteria.

I cultured it up to a 2L starter and have since pitched it into a 5 gal batch. Again, there was some significant lag time. I know this is purely anecdotal, but the starter really smelled like interlude. Fruity, funky, and barnyard like.

Maybe I haven't actually captured THE Allagash brett strain, but we'll see. I can post updates if anyone is curious. Hopefully it forms a pellicle and the evidence will be clear.

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I'd definitely be interested in hearing how that culture works out for you. I have a little bug farm I've wrangled up, and I'm hoping I can add this to my list. Just not sure if what I have will be a viable way to use it.

I was wondering to myself if plating is the only good way to get something usable from the dregs. What I have may have some Brett, but it definitely has Sacc, so as I step it up and feed it, I'm just growing Sacc too.

I've thought about getting into plating and slanting. Maybe this will give me a reason to.

I think plating the dregs is the way to go. It's better to know exactly what you're working with, in my opinion.

Update: I emailed Allagash and asked what yeasts Interlude is bottle conditioned with. They actually responded, and it is indeed bottle conditioned with the yeasts it was fermented with. So, there's brett available in that one! I'm excited to see how this brew turns out.

Update #2: Tasted some after 1 month of fermentation. It is very graham crackery, with some barnyard funk and mild sourness. It needs more time, but it's definitely brett!

The stuff I cultured from the Golden Brett is now starting to show a bit if a pellicle. So, there must at least be some Brett in there.