Have Brett infused Barrel - Need suggestions

The club is a couple months from removing 55 gallons of Flanders from an oak barrel and we don't want to waste the oak or Brett. We need ideas for what to make and put directly back into there. We already have ongoing Meads and ciders elsewhere and we've already done the Belgian Dubbel and trips to death.

Ideas?

Avery had an IPA that was refermented using brett. It was awesome.

The idea of an oaked/soured Brown or Porter has always appealed to me. I just don't want to wait the time it needs to find out if it would be a disaster.

I have yet to see anything on my local package store shelves that would even come close to this but, at a club meeting someone brought an infected RIS that was still younge enough to have just a hint of Brett to it and I thought it was just wonderful but needed more Brett influence to be amazing.

Bobby -

The Oregon crew is doing this:

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f20/wa-brew-day-v2-0-a-71138/index9.html

Jolly Pumpkin Firefly clone.... or La Roja. Both awesome beers! Or start a gueze beer. You could stick each years gueze in the barrel for one year then do the rest of the aging in carboys until it was time to blend...

GilaMinumBeer said:

The idea of an oaked/soured Brown or Porter has always appealed to me. I just don't want to wait the time it needs to find out if it would be a disaster.

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That would be interesting, but I think I would wait until the beer was almost done fermenting (in clean glass/stainless/plastic) before introducing it to the barrel. I wouldn't want the sourness/Brett to completely overwhelm.

GilaMinumBeer said:

The idea of an oaked/soured Brown or Porter has always appealed to me. I just don't want to wait the time it needs to find out if it would be a disaster.

I have yet to see anything on my local package store shelves that would even come close to this but, at a club meeting someone brought an infected RIS that was still younge enough to have just a hint of Brett to it and I thought it was just wonderful but needed more Brett influence to be amazing.

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I had 2 gallons of my smoked porter go sour. It is awesome, it has a strange berry hint to it. It is a truly unique beer and ended up well. So I would say that would be a legitimate option.

EDIT: I agree with the Bird. Mine was infected by forgetting to clean my secondary vessel, the porter was at about 16 points when it went into the contaminated vessel.

Brett RIS. Eh? EH?

Chriso said:

Brett RIS. Eh? EH?

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Brewpastor made a Brett RIS that was outstanding!

Chriso said:

Brett RIS. Eh? EH?

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I just drooled on my shirt.

You could always cut little pieces of the barrel up and ship them to HBT members so that they can play with brett too.

BigKahuna said:

I just drooled on my shirt.

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+1! Gotta go change my shirt now.

I'll try to rack my Brett Razz RIS to a keg later this week. I've been meaning to do that for months. It's been in plastic for.. uh.. 9 months? Let you guys know how it tastes, when I get there!

"Have Brett, will travel"

I would do a Belgian Pale ale in that bad boy. That slight belgian funk from the yeast melds beautifully with brett...............yummo

Bobby_M said:

The club is a couple months from removing 55 gallons of Flanders from an oak barrel and we don't want to waste the oak or Brett. We need ideas for what to make and put directly back into there. We already have ongoing Meads and ciders elsewhere and we've already done the Belgian Dubbel and trips to death.

Ideas?

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I would love to do something like https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f72/drunk-owl-mango-55227/ in a barrel someday

Quote Reverend JC
I would do a Belgian Pale ale in that bad boy. That slight belgian funk from the yeast melds beautifully with brett...............yummo
That is what my above recipe is with mango

What about a saison?

Moonshae, spot on what I was thinking! As soon as JC said "Belgian pale", the FIRST thing I thought of was a huge, in-your-face, wet-horse, dog-in-a-phone-booth stinky funky Saison, with a good ol' dose of Brett to dry out the end. Mmmmmm.

I may have to grab another Dupont! Hope this one is as skunky as the last!

Yeah, a Saison Brett was on my short list as was a Cherry Lambic but I didn't want to taint the opinions. Decisions...

Chriso said:

I'll try to rack my Brett Razz RIS to a keg later this week. I've been meaning to do that for months. It's been in plastic for.. uh.. 9 months? Let you guys know how it tastes, when I get there!

"Have Brett, will travel"

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I'd love to hear how that turned out, how you made it, and what you might change to improve it for next time.

Heh heh. Things I'd do differently? Use real raspberries. I used "Smuckers Real Fruit Spread", which I un-twisted the cap (but left it covering the jar) and left the jars in boiling water for 15 minutes to soften and hopefully sanitize.

Then I let it cool somewhat, and poured both jars into the secondary, with 2.5 gal RIS.

It had a Brett pellicle within another week, and smelled like gasoline mixed with fruit. I've left it in that plastic secondary since then (2/08). I've moved it a few times, and even threw a crushed Campden tablet in there back in July or so. The pellicle still hasn't dropped.

I need to rack it into some glass - it was 2.5 gallons when I racked in, and is only 2.0 gallons now. Oh well, evaporation might make it stronger?

Haven't taken a taste sample since March though.

Need to clean up the spigot - the mice chewed the vent hole open because they wanted the tasty dried beer in there! So I need to pick out the pieces of plastic, and StarSan the hell out of it before I can rack the beer to glass or to a keg. And after racking, I'm thinking that bucket probably needs to be replaced. (I thought about just replacing the spigot and OxyCleaning it though.)

I'm thinking I'm going to rack it to a corny, and force carb, rather than add new yeast and priming sugar. Don't want the brett to throw things, and cause bottle bombs. Once carbed, BMBF into bottles?

I'd like to find little 8oz bottles for this, but doubt I'll spend the $$$.