Brett B in Goose Island Matilda

Had a bottle of Matilda and cultured the brett bits from the bottom of it. Curious if anyone knows the flavor profile of the brett in here. The bottle I drank was 2011, had some pleasant fruitiness in the aroma. Quite pleasing. The taste was very different. Funky, slightly leathery, bretty I guess.

Anyway, seemed like a very nice yeast to culture so I made a 8oz starter with the bottle bits and it took off nicely.

All Goose Island said about it was that it was Brett B. Which is about as helpful as saying it was primary fermented with sacc c.

And that's whats frustrating about brettanomyces. Even people who ought to know better, e.g. homebrewers, still have this idea that one brett is all brett. Like oh, it's brett l, so it will taste just like brett l always will taste. Or, brett c is pretty mild. So all brett c is mild.

You compare the wyeast brett vs the white labs brett and you clearly see the vast difference between the two. You compare Orval, which is funky but a bit restrained, to the Boulevard Saison Brett which is like getting 3 acres of hot, wet cattle farm shoveled into your mouth and nose. Night and day.

Anyway, that's why I'm asking about the Matilda brett. Maybe they just took it from Orval, since Matilda is the GI Orval-inspired beer.

Its really hard to know, brett has been in the background of brewing until recently so there really isn't the research there is for things like your typical beer and wine yeasts. My hope is that if peoples' taste for brett sticks we will start seeing a much better taxonomy because there are certainly characteristics of brett I really enjoy, I just don't particularly like the taste of licking a cows ass after it suffered a bad bout of diarrhea. I know that doesn't answer your question, but maybe some thoughts to chew on.

If I recall they use Wyeast's standard bruxellensis strain.

buttcord said:

If I recall they use Wyeast's standard bruxellensis strain.

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Makes sense. Where did you learn that?

Just dry hopped an IPA fermented solely with cultured Matilda brett (2012 vintage), went from 1.085 to 1.014 in 7 days. I let it go another 3 weeks and it appears to be finished at 1.010. Smells like a bowl full of tropical fruit, can't wait to try it. I'll follow up when I get around to sampling the finished product.

Here ya go:
http://www.whitelabs.com/beer/bacteria.html

The fact that they shared anything about how they make the beer at all speaks pretty highly imo.

Toccata said:

Here ya go:
http://www.whitelabs.com/beer/bacteria.html

The fact that they shared anything about how they make the beer at all speaks pretty highly imo.

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Most places will give you a decent amount of info if you ask. Ive gotten whole recipes from places before.

Boulevard will give you the malt bill in percentages, substitutions for uncommon speciality ingredients, and the hop schedule, og, fg, and ibu if you ask. They just don't talk about their yeast beyond "its ourk house English strain". Which is fine.

I wasn't being critical of GI, just lamenting the fact that brett is this black box for people. You hear things like "brett b is really barnyard" when in fact there are thousands of variants of brett b, some of which are funky and some are fruity.

Wasn't there an infected batch of Matilda in 2011 that they recalled? I think OP might be drinking that.

levifunk said:

Wasn't there an infected batch of Matilda in 2011 that they recalled? I think OP might be drinking that.

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It was select 2010 bottlings.

I drank one of the recalled bottles and enjoyed it... a lot more of the horsey barnyard than matilda typically has. I get a lot more fruity brett character in matilda now.