Help a funk newb

I have my first brett beer almost underway. I'm doing an Orval style, so right now its fermenting away with some Belgian sacc. which should finish around 1.012 or so (OG 1.058). Then I will rack to a secondary (can't remember the last secondary I used!) and adding the brett. The plan is to do the 4 week thing like Orval; however, this is where my confusion is. Brett can take a long time to do its thing so how do I bottle it and get predictable results with carbonation? Do I hit it with a campden to kill it off then at bottling add some US-05 or something like that, or will the available fermentables be so low by that point that I don't need to worry and I can carbonate as I would a normal beer?

From what I remember, campden doesn't kill yeast, only prevent's it's reproduction, so I don't think that's a viable option. I always assumed people let brett work through it's long slow process then carb normally with normal amounts of sugar.

Yeah, looking into it you're right about it not killing yeast. So, that leads me back to how do you bottle? I know Orval does it and many others do, I just want to make sure I don't end up with bottle bombs as the brett does its thing.

I'm a newb at it too. I would be interested in anyone's input.

For mine, I have it in 6 x 5 liter carboys (about 7 gallons total). My plan is to bottle half after 3 months in secondary to make sure it ferments down to a decent level.

You would need to let the brett complete fermentation to stability and then add priming sugar when you bottle, basically like any other fermentation.

You can cold crash the brett and add a sacc strain to bottle. You could go the campden route and add a sacc strain to bottle to give the sacc an opportunity to consume all the priming sugar to carb the bottles. Either way if there is still dextrose in the beer the brett that made its way into the bottle will continue to consume it and push out more CO2, albeit slowly.

ReverseApacheMaster said:

You would need to let the brett complete fermentation to stability and then add priming sugar when you bottle, basically like any other fermentation.

You can cold crash the brett and add a sacc strain to bottle. You could go the campden route and add a sacc strain to bottle to give the sacc an opportunity to consume all the priming sugar to carb the bottles. Either way if there is still dextrose in the beer the brett that made its way into the bottle will continue to consume it and push out more CO2, albeit slowly.

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That is what I assumed; however, that leads back to how Orval bottles a month after the brett is in. Is this simply knowing their process so well that they know exactly how much sugar is available for the brett and therefore know what kind of CO2 to expect? Or can I expect hitting the beer with brett in the secondary to quickly reduce the remaining sugar so that it will be stable within a month?

it will prob take the brett more like 6+ months to finish up everyting. I dont think 1 month will do anything at all. When you're playing with brett, post fermentation, you really need to have some patience. An all brett beer is completely diff. I would pitch the brett into secondary wait 6 months and take a gravity reading as well as taste it. I would wait untill it is down to about 1.002. Even then it might not taste right yet.