Brett only orval "clone"?

I've seen several orval clones and was just thinking how would it taste if it were all brett, no "brewers" yeast. Not really looking to clone an orval, but using the base "clone" recipe for an all brett beer. Thoughts? it tastes good in my head, but so have several other things that didn't work so well in real life.

What kind of Brett are you intending on using, and are you excluding pedio and lacto? Regardless I think it would be worth trying if you like the brett flavor. I have a Brett-Saison you should try... It has gotten good reviews from some local guys and I need to get rid of it before it becomes bottle bombs

I have a 100% Brett beer fermenting right now with Saison wort. A couple things that I have read about Brett when it is alone it doesn't get nearly as funky and it doesn't superattenuate. I think a lot of the flavors we attribute to Brett used during secondary fermentation come from it being stressed in a low nutrient environment. When you pitch Brett alongside Sacc, the Sacc is much faster at using up the oxygen stores and nutrients available leaving Brett only the scraps to work with. This stresses the Brett and causes it to eat every last bit of fermentables and put off very funky flavors. When you use it alone it can take it's time to get going, not run out of nutrients, and still have plenty of simple sugars to metabolize.

This is just my understanding from reading Wild Brews and reports from the few brewers who have done 100% Brett beers. I will find out soon as my Brett Saison is working it's way through those sugars nicely as we speak. But as for making something along the lines of Orval you would want to use Brett after primary fermentation, since a lot of the flavors in the beer come from the Sacc strain in primary.

nealf, the saison sounds good. Sill deciding what strain(s) I may use. I'm not a huge fan of lacto. I like it, just not 5 gallons worth.

Of course, I'm really looking for the "funkiness" of a saison, kicked up a notch, but not necessarily in a saison. If that sounds at all feasible. Not recreating anything in particular and I like the base orval recipes (not trying to clone orval) as a starting point. I was disappointed in Ommegang's Ommegeddon. I want the big funkiness, like drinking a barn floor

bakins said:

I've seen several orval clones and was just thinking how would it taste if it were all brett, no "brewers" yeast. Not really looking to clone an orval, but using the base "clone" recipe for an all brett beer. Thoughts? it tastes good in my head, but so have several other things that didn't work so well in real life.

Click to expand...

We've refined a fairly accurate all grain Orval clone recipe here. We've brewed it quite a few times and it's about right on. You can find the recipe down the page about half way:

http://www.candisyrup.com/recipes.html

Primary with Orval sacc, secondary with a Brett and sacc per the BLAM spec.

Cheers!

If you really want that high level funkiness I would suggest starting the brew with sacc and then finishing with brett. Kick the heat up on the brett when you pitch it to the upper 60's to 70. For me that seems to really kick on the funk quickly without having to wait months on end. On the other end of the stick, if you go all brett I would expect you to not have a high level of funk at all like Tonedef said.

I concur with the other people who said for max brett flavor you need to do a primary with a sacc strain and toss in brett as a secondary. Brett on its own does not produce the super strong brett flavors. You get mild brett flavors without the typically dry mouthfeel and of course no sacc flavors.

You might be better off fermenting with a neutral ale yeast strain, something like 1338 that doesn't attenuate well, and then pitch brett with some maltodextrin and possibly feeding it a little more maltodextrin over time to keep feeding the brett to produce more brett character. However, I could see that taking a long time to finish out.