Brett Saison Finished High

[radwizard]

I have a Saison (565) with Brett (645 + Dregs) that has was brewed on 5-6-17. The 565 was finicky, and I co pitched it with a vial of Brett C (no starter) and some Holy Mountain/CS Dregs. I racked the beer to a secondary after about 2 weeks in primary. At racking the beer was 1.015.

I have not really checked on these beers (I had 2 different Saisons I brewed on brew day.) They have waterless airlocks, and are sitting in my basement at 68f.

Yesterday I sampled both the beers. One of them was pegged, it finished well. This one, with 565/645 is at 1.011 right now. I'm not sure why, I have not had a Saison Brett finish this high. I usually have excellent results with this style. I don't even worry about them anymore, I have a method, and it has always produced nice dry Saison with great Brett Character.

I'm racking my brain, trying to figure out why this beer didn't finish lower. I did use some dregs when I racked to secondary that I wasn't sure about (killer wine strain?), but I am under the impression that this wouldn't effect the Brett activity. I'm still not sure the cause but I am think on a solution.

The Beer tastes pretty good, but is a little sweet on the end, for a Saison anyways. I'm thinking about a few options, and would love feedback....

1)I have 200 cells of Imperial Yeast Suburban Brett in my fridge. Pitch them in and let it sit a month or two

2)Add Dextrine (but I am not sure I have much active yeast in there)

3)Keg as is and add a bottle of White Wine (It tastes OK, maybe take a chance, and see if something better comes out)

If anyone has any thoughts, on improving, or insight to what may have went wrong, it'd be great to hear!
Thanks!

 

[jodell]

How long has it been in secondary?

 

[radwizard]

How long has it been in secondary?

A little over 5 months

 

[jodell]

Yeah it should be lower than that.

Personally I would gently stir it up and replace the airlock with some foil. The raising yeast stalls but is very hard pressure sensitive. (Although I would have thought the Brett would take care of that but it's worth a shot before anything else)

My next option would be to try the yeast you have and see if that starts anything

Dextrine really isn't going to help

White wine would be my last option but it could work

 

[505-Brewer]

What was the grain bill and mash temp? Is this an extract batch? Ferm temp? Hard to say otherwise. Assuming it is fermentable i would rack to a keg pitch an active brett culture and wait longer. Let the keg build 10 psi or so.

You dont want dextrine. Maybe dextrose.......

 

[xico]

The Brett is definitely taking its time. Even if you did a high-temp mash I'd expect the gravity to be lower than that.

A couple thoughts on what to try:
-More time, some bretts are isolates from so-called spontaneous fermentation spaces and often are accustomed to sitting on beer for longer than 5 months. Depending on the conditions they've been selected for they might favor one sugar over a another and have varying pH and alcohol tolerances that control metabolic speeds.

-Turn up the heat is my first go-to method for speeding the bretts along. Sacch only throws off heavy alcohols in early primary andd the saison would favor the warmth as well without risk of producing "hot" flavors. 25-28C (77-82.4F) is not unreasonable for a handful of days and I bet your airlock will get to kicking again.

-The sure-shot way of speeding up a Brett. is with pitching a diastaticus yeast. This is a subspecies of sacch. cerevisiae that can chew through maltotrioses rapidly. Good news is some saison yeast are diastaticus. Pitching a high krausen yeast slurry of wyeast 3711 will surely do the trick. At a rate of 1 million cells per mL is good place for a secondary ferment. white labs' French Saison is not the same as wyeast so this solution only works with access to this liquid or a comparable dry.

And no, in case folk are worried this is a dangerous contaminant in light of Left Hand's massive recall, introducing diastaticus to your brew equipment is no more dangerous than any other sacch or brett so long as you have good sanitation practices. diastaticus becomes dangerous when commercial breweries send out packaging they think is finished and don't know they have an ultra-drying yeast in their product.

 

[radwizard]

Just to follow up on this:

I ended up pitching more Brett (100B Cells of Imperials Suburban Brett) and put a brew belt on the better bottle. I also added 3 lbs of Pureed Peaches.

Fermentation started to speed up pretty quickly, and has still continued. I am planning on packaging mid-Jan.

In hindsight, I think I should have considered mashing lower, and fermenting warmer- since 565 is often finicky. I should have pitched more Brett when I racked to secondary, to account for the higher gravity. I feel like this beer will be very well once finished, so it is all good! There was a lot of learning points in this beer!!!

 

[6midgets]

Just to follow up on this:

I ended up pitching more Brett (100B Cells of Imperials Suburban Brett) and put a brew belt on the better bottle. I also added 3 lbs of Pureed Peaches.

Fermentation started to speed up pretty quickly, and has still continued. I am planning on packaging mid-Jan.

In hindsight, I think I should have considered mashing lower, and fermenting warmer- since 565 is often finicky. I should have pitched more Brett when I racked to secondary, to account for the higher gravity. I feel like this beer will be very well once finished, so it is all good! There was a lot of learning points in this beer!!!

I've got a 6 month barrel aged golden sour in stainless on peaches that needs a little more complexity. I'm thinking about using Imperials Suburban Brett on it. I was curious how it turned out for you.

 

[jfolks]

I've got a 6 month barrel aged golden sour in stainless on peaches that needs a little more complexity. I'm thinking about using Imperials Suburban Brett on it. I was curious how it turned out for you.

Probably better to brew a 100% brett beer and blend it with the golden sour at this point

 

[radwizard]

I've got a 6 month barrel aged golden sour in stainless on peaches that needs a little more complexity. I'm thinking about using Imperials Suburban Brett on it. I was curious how it turned out for you.

The beer turned out surprisingly fantastic, I did not have high hopes for it but continued to let it ride and it paid off. It finished at 1.006. Suburban Brett is good stuff, I have used it several times.

It your situation, I think you need to look at your gravity and see what you have available for the Brett to chew on. Blending is always an option as well if the complexity isn't there.

The beer could also continue to develop complexity if you just give it more time to do it's thing.

 

[6midgets]

It your situation, I think you need to look at your gravity and see what you have available for the Brett to chew on. Blending is always an option as well if the complexity isn't there.

The beer could also continue to develop complexity if you just give it more time to do it's thing.

You've changed my mind. I forgot about the possibility of blending. I guess i'm brewing an all Brett beer this weekend, since i already ordered Suburban Brett. I'll just keep my golden sour on the course it's on and see what comes of it.

 

[couchsending]

I have a Saison (565) with Brett (645 + Dregs) that has was brewed on 5-6-17. The 565 was finicky, and I co pitched it with a vial of Brett C (no starter) and some Holy Mountain/CS Dregs. I racked the beer to a secondary after about 2 weeks in primary. At racking the beer was 1.015.

I have not really checked on these beers (I had 2 different Saisons I brewed on brew day.) They have waterless airlocks, and are sitting in my basement at 68f.

Yesterday I sampled both the beers. One of them was pegged, it finished well. This one, with 565/645 is at 1.011 right now. I'm not sure why, I have not had a Saison Brett finish this high. I usually have excellent results with this style. I don't even worry about them anymore, I have a method, and it has always produced nice dry Saison with great Brett Character.

I'm racking my brain, trying to figure out why this beer didn't finish lower. I did use some dregs when I racked to secondary that I wasn't sure about (killer wine strain?), but I am under the impression that this wouldn't effect the Brett activity. I'm still not sure the cause but I am think on a solution.

The Beer tastes pretty good, but is a little sweet on the end, for a Saison anyways. I'm thinking about a few options, and would love feedback....

1)I have 200 cells of Imperial Yeast Suburban Brett in my fridge. Pitch them in and let it sit a month or two

2)Add Dextrine (but I am not sure I have much active yeast in there)

3)Keg as is and add a bottle of White Wine (It tastes OK, maybe take a chance, and see if something better comes out)

If anyone has any thoughts, on improving, or insight to what may have went wrong, it'd be great to hear!
Thanks!

If you pitched dregs with wine yeast used at bottling that is most likely why it took so much longer for it to finish up. No the Brett doesn’t get killed but the primary Sacch strain probably got pretty decimated after a while and you were only left with a small population of Brett/wine yeast to eat a lot of the sugars. Unless u know for sure the brewery doesn’t use a killer strain at bottling (jester king) I would never pitch dregs in primary. If you’re going to let it age anyways I’d always just throw them in secondary.

 

[RPh_Guy]

If you pitched dregs with wine yeast used at bottling that is most likely why it took so much longer for it to finish up. No the Brett doesn’t get killed but the primary Sacch strain probably got pretty decimated after a while and you were only left with a small population of Brett/wine yeast to eat a lot of the sugars. Unless u know for sure the brewery doesn’t use a killer strain at bottling (jester king) I would never pitch dregs in primary. If you’re going to let it age anyways I’d always just throw them in secondary.

This makes sense.
However, if you make a starter from the dregs, do you think you could make a reasonable guess as to whether or not there is viable Sacc?
I have a small starter from dregs and it certainly fit the timetable for a Brett primary... Although I could be totally wrong of course. I've been pondering what to do with it.

 

[couchsending]

This makes sense.
However, if you make a starter from the dregs, do you think you could make a reasonable guess as to whether or not there is viable Sacc?
I have a small starter from dregs and it certainly fit the timetable for a Brett primary... Although I could be totally wrong of course. I've been pondering what to do with it.

If you made a starter from dregs of a beer that was bottled with wine yeast there is zero of that breweries primary yeast. All the wine yeasts used for bottling are technically Sacc, they’re just killer positive and don’t process complex sugars, and most likely POF- so they will ferment a wort down to a reasonable gravity and the Brett will eventually finish off everything but the characteristics of that bottling wine yeast probably won’t make an awesome beer.

Dregs with killer wine yeast are awesome for secondary though. You’ll still get all the positive aspects of the brett/bacteria in that culture.