First time with Brett!

[MisterThirsty]

Hi all.

I've been home brewing for many years, but have only recently made my first foray into making wild beers. I brew on a 20L E-BIAB and the first recipe I made is a Farmhouse Ale with Brett Claussenii.

5KG Canada Malting Pale 2-row malt.
0.45 KG Carafoam Malt
0.45 KG Biscuit Malt
0.23KG Pale Chocolate Malt
Infusion mash 90 minutes at 66C
Mash out for 10 minutes at 76C

Boil 60 minutes, add:
1oz Premiant Hop Pellets (6.5%AA) (60 minutes)
0.25 tsp Whirfloc (10 minutes)

Ferment with:
1 Danstar Abbey Yeast (added on brew day, Oct 7?)
1 Starter of White Labs Brettanomyces Claussenii (added on Oct 21 2016)

OG: 15P
Gravity on OCT 21 2016: 3.5P

The pellicle started to form around a month ago and has become quite thick. Based on what I've read I was planning to leave the beer in the secondary on the Brett for 6 months, meaning I will bottle in April. I'm planning to bottle this beer in champagne/Belgian bottles with my fancy new corker. This is my first time bottling with proper champagne cork/cage style closures in champagne bottles with a corker, something I want to do more regularly for special vintage brews.

If anyone has experience working with this kind of set up for bottling, and/or priming/bottling a beer that's been in secondary on Brett for 6 months I would love to hear from you. This is all totally uncharted territory for me. Specifically I would love to know if people are adding new yeast for priming, or priming off the Brett for styles like this.

Cheers.
MisterThirsty.

 

[doomy86]

Hey MisterThirsty,

Wow, this is a beautiful pellicle.

My experience with brett only brews was, that the brett continued to chow slowly on the sugars until the gravity was as low as 0.001 - 0.003.. I never added any other yeast for bottleing.

Cheers!

 

[wmcc75]

I've never added new yeast at bottling time, the brett will carb it up. It may take a little longer than if you were to add fresh yeast.

 

[MisterThirsty]

That's OK, I was planning on bottle aging almost all of it for another 6-12 months anyways. I'll post up pictures the day I do the bottling and corking. I even got the little foil hoods since I'm planning on giving some of this away for Christmas gifts. Thanks for the reassurance, I'm just worried about putting all this time into a special beer and then having the re-fermentation crap out early because of dormant yeast. It's good to know that you haven't had that problem before.