Brett L finished Wine Yeast Beer Question

[fivepoundpossum]

Three months ago, I made a beer with a flanders red-esque grain bill, used Convertase AG to break down the maltose and maltotriose and fermented it with a red wine yeast. One day into the fermentation (it was 1.020 from 1.047 or so), I added a slug of my Brett L culture. Now, it's at 1.000, has a thin pellicle and some brett cherry aroma but minimal flavor.

My question is, with no sugar remaining, will the brett continue to metabolize the remaining compounds and add more flavor? If not, should I add sugar to feed it?

 

[sweetcell]

brett doesn't need sugars to make flavor, so i wouldn't bother. the beer is still very young, un-carbed, not aged, etc. hard to know for certain what the final beer is going to taste like.

the Convertase wasn't needed, IMO. that enzyme broke down all the complex sugars into simple ones, which was good for the wine yeast but bad for the brett. brett is able to digest those complex sugars. brett can digest a lot of things, like the yeast's by-products (not sure how many wine yeast makes) but had there been complex sugars left over after the wine yeast did their thing the brett would have attacked those. in summary: you need Convertase if you're using wine yeast alone (at least according to Shea Comfort), but with brett you don't need it: the brett will finish up the job.

 

[fivepoundpossum]

thanks, sweetcell. i probably should have added the convertase just to my control batch, but i wanted to see what the brett would do to a beer completely fermented out with the wine yeast (turns out, weird--partially pleasant but also fusely and kind of gross). i'll let it sit for another few months and see how it goes.

 

[sweetcell]

definitely give that beer some more time. i've had some brett beers that started weird but aged out very nicely.