Orval culture in secondary?

So I decided to make a Belgian a couple weeks back and it was the Black Diamond Brewing Winter Ale clone from a Brew Your Own magazine. I fermented with Wyeast Trappist and it went from 1.060 to 1.016. This is pretty typical for an extract based recipe. Anyways, I am planning to rack to secondary once I get my APA out of the carboy and I have read that some people use Brett in secondary to mimic some of the Orval aroma and taste.

Would it make sense for me to maybe add some light candy sugar and a Orval bottle culture in secondary for a little while to add some of that unique delicious funk?

Or would I be wasting my time and money?

I would add the culture at bottling, not in secondary. My current best practice for brett-infected belgians is to ferment to completion in primary, then cold-crash in a secondary very close to freezing for a week. Rack to bottling bucket, add the culture, and bottle as usual. Age for at least 6 months. It takes a looong time for brett to attenuate the bottling sugar and the stuff saccharomyces can't ferment.

When you use a different yeast to bottle how do you get all the wort infected? Do you make a starter and just drop that in the bottling bucket and rack onto that, then proceed as usual?

I'd make a small starter with the dregs, throw it into secondary, and wait until it hits a very low FG. This can take quite a long time as Brett is very slow. Premature bottling could cause overcarbonation / bottle bombs because the Brett will continue to eat sugars that your base Saccro yeast can't.

wonderbread23 said:

I'd make a small starter with the dregs, throw it into secondary, and wait until it hits a very low FG. This can take quite a long time as Brett is very slow. Premature bottling could cause overcarbonation / bottle bombs because the Brett will continue to eat sugars that your base Saccro yeast can't.

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Okay, what temps?

Bottle bombs are a known problem with brett refermentation. Ideally, you should bottle in belgian-style bottles and cork them with wire hoods.

I guess the secondary is a good option if you aren't set up to cork. But, yeah, it will take a long time.

petep1980 said:

Okay, what temps?

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I'd shoot for the mid 60's. Its going to take awhile, so I'd be mainly concerned with large daily fluctuations rather than gradual seasonal variations.

I can hold mid 60s FOREVER. However if it's going to take a year before I can bottle I can promise you I have no such patience.

Apparently Orval bottle conditions for only 4 weeks at 15degC (~60F). Your mileage may vary.

SickTransitMundus said:

Apparently Orval bottle conditions for only 4 weeks at 15degC (~60F). Your mileage may vary.

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That's bottle conditioning. Perhaps they also secondary on brett prior to that? I have no idea.

Eh, what I'll do is proceed as usual with no orval, but rack a gallon aside with orval drags and leave it forever and see what happens.

I don't use Brett, so I'm just throwing this out there and don't mean this as any sort of gospel. I've read on more than one forum that multiple guys who've used the dregs from only a couple bottles of Orval (in secondary, I believe) found definite Brett character after only a few weeks, and one or two said they thought it even got a little out of hand after a few months. This seems to go completely against those who say Brett needs months to make a real difference. Anybody ever notice anything after only a few weeks?

Well I'm going to plunge and do this. I figure 2 bottles worth of dregs should be enough. You figure you prob don't need a ton because the new starting gravity is 1.014.