100% Brett Mead

Does anyone have experience fermenting a mead with 100% brett? I have my first couple batches of mead currently fermenting with wine yeast but I have a couple of 100% brett beers and ciders and I was considering harvesting their yeast cake for one of my next gallon batches of mead. I have both wyeast brett lambicus and brett brux available. I was thinking about using the lambicus for mead because it is fruity as heck. Anyway, when I search it in the forums I don't find a ton of information so I though I'd ask.

I did what I thought was a 100% Brett mead with Brett Trios but unfortunately it appears that WLP644 is not Brett.

My intent was to use the Trios because of the "fruity as heck" descriptions I've read. I brewed this in November 2014 and I have plans to sample my first bottle this weekend. I can post my tasting notes if you want, but considering this now not a Brett yeast I am not sure that's what you are looking for.

Well, even though it's not brett it does produce a similar flavor profile so tasting notes would probably still be interesting

This sounds interesting! I look forward to your results.

Great idea, I think it would be interesting to see how it comes out. Only caution: I don't think Potassium Sorbate works on Brett, or Brett requires such a high level to inhibit that it will impact the smell, so you wouldn't be able to stabilize and backsweeten the mead. But I could be wrong, having trouble finding the source I thought I read this in.

I've been looking into this for a while, and actually just brewed a 100% Brett L cherry melomel yesterday. I don't really have any personal experience to offer yet, but got a lot of influence from the good results here: http://www.lewybrewing.com/2013/02/100-brett-mead-oohh-yes.html

Was looking for exactly this. OG and attenuation? Tasting notes?

hansning said:

Was looking for exactly this. OG and attenuation? Tasting notes?

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Did not take an OG reading, since I had so many things out of suspension that I didn't trust one. A calculator gives me 1.135 based on my recipe (7# honey, 1# oats, 3#1oz cherry puree in 2.5 gallons) and last I checked I was somewhere in the ballpark of 1.014. I added dregs from russian river and almanac sours after a while, but iirc I wasn't too far off from that prior to adding.

Tasting notes: it's still in the fermenter, and there's a lot going on between the puree and oak (and unknown bugs). A recent sampling was very good, however, with the brett (wyeast 5526) expressing itself as it would in a "wild" beer (as opposed to a more restrained brett primary), a little cheesy and a lot of "cherry pie". Though to be honest, I'm not sure if I should attribute this to my primary brett or to the work of bottle dregs: I recall it being less expressive than it is now, and the dregs are definitely going to town as my most recent pull was all pedio buttered popcorn.

Which is a long-winded way of saying: brett can do work in the primary, and looks like it can hold on up to a higher abv than advertised (this should be 16% at the moment -- and hopefully some is still holding on so it can clean up that diacetyl!). I couldn't tell you from experience how it would do on its own in a less harsh environment, though I can say that I've had success finishing very dry with brett in a secondary fermentation (that one's still harsh after ~6 months).