Should I add sugar to my secondary Brett fermentation?

I'm attempting my first fermentation with Brett Brux, so I will probably have several questions for the experts here over the coming months.

For this fermentation, I'm finishing off a biere de garde with Brett. I left the beer in primary for a bit over 5 weeks, in which time it went from 1.067 to 1.018. This is lower attenuation than I was thinking I'd get, but that's no big deal, b/c I wanted the Brett to have something to chew on.

My question is - should I add additional sugar to the secondary to give it more to work on, or just let it finish off the last ~2 points? It seems like having the biere de garde yeast (Wyeast's recent private selection 3725) tackle the first 5 points and then the Brett finish the last ~2 points will produce a beer with a nice Brett character, but retaining the tell-tale biere de garde flavor as well. But this is my first go at this, so I'm soliciting opinions - Thanks for the help!

No need to add sugar, if you add it now the primary yeast will probably eat most of it anyway. I doubt the Brett will take it down to 1.000, but it will certainly knock off another .01 or so. You can always add sugar later, once the Brett is established, if you don't get enough funk.

Biere de Garde's aren't known for their yeast character, the Brett will probably be the dominant aromatics (along with the malt) when it is done fermenting. Despite the name of the Wyeast strain it is supposed to be from Fantome (a brewery known for their use of Brett), although I've been told it is pretty clean at lower temps.

Thanks for the advice. I split this batch and fermented the other half with the Wyeast French saison, which got it down to 1.004. I mashed at 145 for 90 minutes to ensure really good attenuation. So I was assuming (or hoping maybe) that the Brett would get things to 1.004 or lower over the course of several months.

Didn't know it was a Fantome strain, I'll have to go grab a bottle from them to sample. The 5-week primary stayed between 64 and 68 F, so it tasted quite clean, albeit too sweet for my tastes at 1.018.

If you end up with less brett character than you wanted you could add some maltodextrin. That would feed the brett only.

So an update now, ~3 months later. I took a hydro/taster sample yesterday, and the gravity is down to 1.004. It tastes really great, but I'm not sure how much Brett character I can detect. I guess its possible the biere de garde yeast is responsible for the rest of that fermentation, but that would be impressive at 94% attenuation (although I did mash at 145 for 90 minutes).

So now I'm at a crossroads - I would like to have this kegged or bottled by late October b/c I'd like to enter it into a competition. I'm pondering the risk/reward ratio for adding maltodextrin. If I add a bit of maltodextrin to give the beer a bit more Brett character, am I looking at more than another ~3 months to let this ride? Do I risk the Brett being really slow and having to let this ferment for a while or incomplete fermentation of the maltodextrin resulting in poorer flavor of the final beer? I definitely know that I'll need to re-rouse the Brett, since its flocc'ed out on the bottom of the carboy. Do I just let it ride as-is for another couple of months and take the guaranteed success of what I know will be a tasty beer, albeit with a little less Brett character than I was shooting for?

Any advice, thoughts, suggestions are greatly appreciated.

i did a similar thing with a tripel and while the brett character didn't scream at bottling or shortly thereafter, i have lots of hope that six months later it has increased... i actually put one in the fridge the other day and was planning on having it tonight...

not sure how similar our circumstances are, but i'll post back and let you know if the brett character has increased in the bottle more than it was - i just had the control last (non-brett tripel) last night...

just drank my brett finished tripel - no doubt it's the same beer. it's slightly dryer however, with a little more tropical than the citrus taste of the regular batch (trappist primary and brett-c finish with just a little oak)

my normal tripel is off the chart "belgian" and the brett-c smoothed it out - i definitely prefer the brett finished version. much more going on.

probably doesn't relate to brett-b much but i'm a fan of the idea of pitching brett after most of primary is done - from what i've read (tasted) it produces nice results and mine had no additional sugar added. although i think feeding it would be cool.. too many beers to make. report back after yours is done please.

Thanks jtakacs. How much residual sugar was left from your initial fermentation for the brett c. to chew on?

Its killing me that I don't have the control anymore to compare to, but it wouldn't be a real control anyway. I split the batch in half, fermented half with 3711 and the other half with Wyeast's private selection biere de garde yeast. The saison was incredible, my best beer yet, won a competition, and was gone from the kegerator after one short party where everyone ripped through it in a half hour.

I think I'm in the same boat as you though, in that I can definitely tell a difference from the brett, although I have to remember back to 3 months ago when I tasted the 1.018 hydro sample from the finished BDG primary, and of course that's not apples to apples since it was quite sweet then. Regardless, its going to be a great beer, just nit-picking at this point to make it really great.

Brett c. is next on my list for exploratory fermentations. I've heard great things about the mild citrusy funk that you can get from that yeast.

Also jtakacs - how long did you let it sit on the brett c?

I'm at 3 months now, but I'm pretty sure I'm at terminal gravity (if I choose to not add maltodextrin). I know I'm supposed to have patience and all, but...

my tripel fermented about 95% out on wyeast trappist (huge starter) - i then split the batch and pitched brett-c and oak on half... it only dropped maybe 2 more points (about 1.5). pulled the oak out after two weeks and let the tripel bulk age for about 6 weeks - everything was stable for four weeks and i bottled.

all in all i like the brett finished one better - just more going on.

if i were going to do it again, i'd feed it more sugar during fermentation to dry it out a bit more. forget what my final gravity was, but it was on the high end of the style, i'd rather it be in the lower end.