100% Brett IPA

Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum

Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

nimboden

Well-Known Member
Joined
Apr 3, 2013
Messages
80
Reaction score
15
Recipe Type
All Grain
Yeast
WLP644 - Brett Trois
Yeast Starter
2L
Additional Yeast or Yeast Starter
1L
Batch Size (Gallons)
11
Original Gravity
16.8°
Final Gravity
2.2°
Boiling Time (Minutes)
80
IBU
93 - according to beersmith
Primary Fermentation (# of Days & Temp)
14 days @ 68
Tasting Notes
See Below
Brewed a version of this based of Tonsmeire's recipe that was then made into Neverwhere by Modern Times in San Diego. Blew through the keg faster than any of my previous beers. upped it to an 11 gallon batch and change up the hops a bit because I don't have any centennial. The Mad Fermentationist is awesome, everything, the blog, book, recipes. So thanks for the inspiration for this. :mug:

60 min @ 154°
raise to 168 over flame an hold for 5 min

80 min boil

72.4% Great Western 2 Row
20.7% Briess Red Wheat
3.4% Acid Malt
3.4% Carapils

80g Magnum 12% @ 60 min
90g Cascade 8.8% @ 60 min

80g Chinook 13% @ 0 min
70g Citra 12% @ 0 min
80g Cascade 8.8% @ 0 min

Whirlpool for 15 min before chilling.

70g each Chinook,Citra,Cascade Dry hop for 5 days then cold cash after gravity stabilizes.

2 fresh tubes of WLP644 in a 2L started chilled and decanted and stepped up again with 1L of 10° wort.

Tasting notes from my last batch that had centennial instead of cascade were amazing. Super fruity hops, firm bitterness and a nice funk that played well with the juiciness of the hops.

Will update with tasting notes when this one is ready. :rockin:
 
Did you experience much of a lag time before seeing any activity?

I'm currently working on culturing some Brett B. & L. I have only used Brett for some secondary fermentation in a couple carboys, and have used some at bottling (champagne bottles, going for that orval character).

I am very interested to try a 100% Brett beer, but my starters were always slow to start (70deg) and sorta look like bottom fermenters. I did not put either on a stir plate, in hopes to limit acetic acid production.


Does this sound familiar? I know the bulk of the sugar was taken out by the primary strain used in the above examples, so I'm not expecting a fast rowdy fermentation...
but in a starter- the Brett is the only strain..


Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew
 
Did you experience much of a lag time before seeing any activity?

I'm currently working on culturing some Brett B. & L. I have only used Brett for some secondary fermentation in a couple carboys, and have used some at bottling (champagne bottles, going for that orval character).

I am very interested to try a 100% Brett beer, but my starters were always slow to start (70deg) and sorta look like bottom fermenters. I did not put either on a stir plate, in hopes to limit acetic acid production.


Does this sound familiar? I know the bulk of the sugar was taken out by the primary strain used in the above examples, so I'm not expecting a fast rowdy fermentation...
but in a starter- the Brett is the only strain..


Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew


I used a stir plate to prop my Brett cultures. While I've read that starters are not recommended because some bugs grow at different proportions I've never had any unwanted flavors using the white labs brett trois. I don't make starters for my other Sours where I know there is a mix of bugs.

With this strain they recommend a warmer fermentation 70-80, I believe, and I've had better and faster results on the higher side. This batch I fermented low around 65 and it was considerably slower about 4 weeks to hit terminal gravity vs the 2 weeks at warmer temps. Never had much Krausen produced on any batches. This is an awesome beer and would highly recommend it. Cheers
 
Brewed a version of this based of Tonsmeire's recipe that was then made into Neverwhere by Modern Times in San Diego. Blew through the keg faster than any of my previous beers. upped it to an 11 gallon batch and change up the hops a bit because I don't have any centennial. The Mad Fermentationist is awesome, everything, the blog, book, recipes. So thanks for the inspiration for this. :mug:

60 min @ 154°
raise to 168 over flame an hold for 5 min

80 min boil

72.4% Great Western 2 Row
20.7% Briess Red Wheat
3.4% Acid Malt
3.4% Carapils

80g Magnum 12% @ 60 min
90g Cascade 8.8% @ 60 min

80g Chinook 13% @ 0 min
70g Citra 12% @ 0 min
80g Cascade 8.8% @ 0 min

Whirlpool for 15 min before chilling.

70g each Chinook,Citra,Cascade Dry hop for 5 days then cold cash after gravity stabilizes.

2 fresh tubes of WLP644 in a 2L started chilled and decanted and stepped up again with 1L of 10° wort.

Tasting notes from my last batch that had centennial instead of cascade were amazing. Super fruity hops, firm bitterness and a nice funk that played well with the juiciness of the hops.

Will update with tasting notes when this one is ready. :rockin:

How long did you secondary and how long until you thought it was good in bottles? I've got a hoppy wheat recipe that kills, and i'd like to try to do 100% Brett on it to be ready for Summer.
 
I believe WLP644 has been proven not to be a Brett strain and actually a Sacc strain.

Before that info came out i made a 100% ipa with the 644 and it was amazing! Tasted very close to Stones Enjoy after 12.26.15 (yes i tried it young and was amazing)
 
How long did you secondary and how long until you thought it was good in bottles? I've got a hoppy wheat recipe that kills, and i'd like to try to do 100% Brett on it to be ready for Summer.

I typically don't secondary my beers and I keg and force carb. Have not had experience with bottle conditioning using this yeast strain. A hoppy wheat with this yeast strain sounds great, I did a citrusy saison with this strain it was great. I would love to hear some more info on this not being a brett strain, from cell counts I have done on this strain it does have the appearance of a brett culture. :mug:
 
so there are other sach strains that if used in secondary create similar flavors to wlp 644? please do go on...
 
I'm going to give this an attempt this weekend. Any lessons or tips from your first couple batches that you haven't shared yet? I'm planning to basically follow your recipe exactly, except a 5 gallon batch.

I noticed you had an 80 minute boil, but 60' hop additions. Did you boil for 20 minutes before adding hops? Any reason for this for flavor impact? Or did you just need to boil off more wort to hit your volumes?

Also, how long did this take to go from grain to glass? Given that I have temp control available, would 1 month be long enough, or is a longer time conditioning a very important part of this beer?
 
I'm going to give this an attempt this weekend. Any lessons or tips from your first couple batches that you haven't shared yet? I'm planning to basically follow your recipe exactly, except a 5 gallon batch.

I noticed you had an 80 minute boil, but 60' hop additions. Did you boil for 20 minutes before adding hops? Any reason for this for flavor impact? Or did you just need to boil off more wort to hit your volumes?

Also, how long did this take to go from grain to glass? Given that I have temp control available, would 1 month be long enough, or is a longer time conditioning a very important part of this beer?

Yep I do 80 min rigours boil on all of my beers with hops either first wort or @ 60'. I plan my grain bill to accommodate the extra boiled off, I just enjoy the peace of mind of a nice long boil; Driving off the SMM (dms precursor), maillard reaction etc. My beers have been more consistent batch to batch since I started this.

Grain to glass depends on if you keg. I keg and full temp control. I also speed up my carbo by shaking the keg. I had this in the keg and drinking at 2 weeks.

Pitch a bunch of healthy yeast, 76-80° for this strain, cold crash for 2 days and pull clear beer to keg and easily within a month.

Please update us on how this goes! :mug:
 
Yes, I plan to keg. Sounds like I'll be fine then. I have a 2L stir plate starter of WLP644 going right now. Planning to brew on Saturday or Sunday.
 
Well, I brewed this up yesterday and everything went well.

I had my 2L starter going on a stir plate for 2 days. Noticed a little kreusen ring in the flask. Cold crashed it overnight before brew day, decanted, then let it warm up at room temp. I then added about 1000ml of second runnings from my mash tun that I boiled and cooled, and let that ride on the stir plate for about 2 hours until it was time to pitch. After pitching, I had bubbles in less than 6 hours. The following morning it is bubbling very steadily with a nice little kreusen layer. My fridge is set to 65F ambient. I might lower that to 64 when I get home today, since wort temp is probably higher.

The hops alone smelled fantastic. I used centennial instead of cascade. I'm also going to add an ounce of amarillo to the dry hops, since I like the tropical fruit flavor it gives. Will update with pics in a few weeks!
 
Sounds great! I never had to much Krausen with this strain. Amarillo sounds like it will be awesome! Cheers
 
I'm getting some insane bubbles on days 2 and 3. It's not slowing down, seems to be pretty voracious! What I thought was krausen earlier appears to actually just be some foam from all the hop oils that is slowly dropping down. So, I can confirm there is very little krausen from this strain, even though it appears to be quite vigorously fermenting. My eyes burn as soon as I open the keezer lid, this is awesome!
 
What are these percentages like 72.4% of how much
Sorry but I'm a noob but I would love to try this beer
I read amazing reviews of wlp644
 
It went down to 1.020 after 7 days. The taste and aroma was insane - like pineapple and citrus with maybe a small hint of wet goat. Absolutely no green or off flavors to speak of. :ban: On day 14, gravity was 1.012, and it still appeared to be bubbling slowly. :confused:

Have you cold crashed and kegged this yeast while it's still technically fermenting? I need this beer to be DONE for a party soon. I dry hopped it 2 days ago and was planning to start lowering the temperature to slow it down before cold crashing, but wasn't sure if it would adversely affect the beer. I have no experience with brett strains, hence why I'm asking.
 
How would you adjust this for bottling? Doesn't Brett tend to finish pretty dry if left to keep going? Should I wait until it hits some level before bottling?

I plan to try this on an el dorado single hop DIPA
 
What are these percentages like 72.4% of how much
Sorry but I'm a noob but I would love to try this beer
I read amazing reviews of wlp644


I mean percentages of the total grain bill. Adjust accordingly to hit correct gravity on your given system.
 
It went down to 1.020 after 7 days. The taste and aroma was insane - like pineapple and citrus with maybe a small hint of wet goat. Absolutely no green or off flavors to speak of. :ban: On day 14, gravity was 1.012, and it still appeared to be bubbling slowly. :confused:



Have you cold crashed and kegged this yeast while it's still technically fermenting? I need this beer to be DONE for a party soon. I dry hopped it 2 days ago and was planning to start lowering the temperature to slow it down before cold crashing, but wasn't sure if it would adversely affect the beer. I have no experience with brett strains, hence why I'm asking.


I would go off taste, if it tastes ready then cold crash and keg, maybe bottle a few off after carbonation and store somewhere warm to see how it's changed. I recently brewed a pale ale with this yeast and called it set at 1.010. So I guess the answer is yes, I have crashed this while it was still "fermenting".

Also, when cold crashing I would suggest just dropping the temp as quickly as possible.
 
How would you adjust this for bottling? Doesn't Brett tend to finish pretty dry if left to keep going? Should I wait until it hits some level before bottling?

I plan to try this on an el dorado single hop DIPA


I personally have never bottle conditioned with this since I only keg.

But as with any other yeast if you let it ferment out all the sugars available then the yeast starts to drop out of suspension. This is usually fine with homebrew because when you move your carboy/bucket it gets some back in suspension and that is usually enough to ferment the dextrose or priming sugar and create the carbonation you want.

What I would do is, cold crash and let everything drop out, pull the clearest beer possible to the bottling bucket then prime with some champagne yeast and dextrose. This would probably give you the most control over carbo.
 
So, White Labs, and other great resources, have officially come out and said this is not a "true" Brett strain. Do I care? No. I love that they took the time to answer our questions considering this strain. This has become my house PA & IPA strain. I love the clean character and the hint of something else? Tasting my first batch when I used this I do get some "funk", not sure what I'm tasting but I like it. Along with the explanation of WLP644 I also notice the WLP648 added to their site. I would love to get my hands on this and do a "true" all brett IPA, not sure when we'll see this for sale. If anyone has any info on online sources for this please share!

http://www.whitelabs.com/files/644_Explanation.pdf

http://www.whitelabs.com/yeast/wlp648-brettanomyces-bruxellensis-trois-vrai

Anyways, I love this beer and I will continue to buy WLP644. I highly recommend this recipe. :mug:
 
My 5 gallon batch of this came out great. I could care less that WLP644 is actually Sacch, not Brett.

My gravities after about 3.5 total weeks were

1.071 OG
1.010 FG
= ~8.1% ABV

I modified the dry hops just to use what I had available. I used 4 oz's of pellet hops in the 5 gallon batch, a bit higher volume that the original recipe called for. They steeped in primary for 7 days.

1oz chinook
1oz citra
2oz amarillo

This beer is incredible. I wouldn't change anything. We hosted a party last night and the keg is almost gone. Pretty much everyone that tried it said good things about it. Two people who are knowledgable beer drinkers remarked this was up there with some of the best IPA's they've ever had. It is definitely the best one I've ever made. It was perfect about 4 weeks after brew day. Extremely hoppy and flavorful. Wonderful lemon and pineapple aromas and flavor, beautiful light color and a dry, crisp finish. Extremely drinkable, delicious, and *dangerous* beer at 8.1%. No off flavors to speak of.

Cheers to sharing that recipe mate! :mug:

brett ipa.jpg
 
Got my hands on some of the true Brett strain from whitelabs, wlp648, will be brewing a saison with citra and sorachi ace. Will update and post that when I do!
 
Back
Top