Non-Sacch organisms and Killer Wine Yeast

[Austin_]

Last year I brewed a darker biere de garde that was fermented with WLP670 and Crooked Stave Hop Savant dregs. Long story short, it never really developed to my liking. Not bad, but not something I wanted 5 gallons of. I decided to call an audible and add in some cabernet sauvignon extract and some Roselare yeast to change it up and play with the complexity.

At the time of adding the cabernet extract, I was at 1.005. The cabernet extract added about 30 gravity points to the brew. That put me on target for a beer that would end up around 11.5%. That's much higher than anything I typically brew. Fast forward a month and I'm sitting at 1.015.

A couple questions:

1) Will the brett and other bugs be able to take the gravity down further? Like I said, I've never made a beer this big, so I'm not sure how my non-Sacch organisms will perform in such a hostile environment.

2) If it appears to stall for a long time, is wine yeast an option? Will the wine yeast kill my non-Sacch organisms like it does Sacch?

 

[sweetcell]

Last year I brewed a darker biere de garde that was fermented with WLP670 and Crooked Stave Hop Savant dregs. Long story short, it never really developed to my liking. Not bad, but not something I wanted 5 gallons of. I decided to call an audible and add in some cabernet sauvignon extract and some Roselare yeast to change it up and play with the complexity.

At the time of adding the cabernet extract, I was at 1.005. The cabernet extract added about 30 gravity points to the brew. That put me on target for a beer that would end up around 11.5%. That's much higher than anything I typically brew. Fast forward a month and I'm sitting at 1.015.

A couple questions:

1) Will the brett and other bugs be able to take the gravity down further? Like I said, I've never made a beer this big, so I'm not sure how my non-Sacch organisms will perform in such a hostile environment.

2) If it appears to stall for a long time, is wine yeast an option? Will the wine yeast kill my non-Sacch organisms like it does Sacch?

1) yes, but it will take longer than a month. you've just pitched the bugs into a very inhospitable enviro. i would forget about this beer for 8 months, then take another sample (but don't forget about it so much that the air lock dries out).

2) everything that i've read told me that killer wine yeast only affect other sacchs. brett and bacteria are unaffected. if you're really worried you could use a non-killer strain like 71-B. if you get the wine yeast to munch up the sugars, that will deprive the bacteria of food and they won't have as much impact.

 

[Austin_]

Thanks. I wasn't planning on it being done any time soon, but I always like to have a contingency plan. I figured with the simple sugars from the grapes it would be droping a little quicker, but you're right, it is a very inhospitable environment. I'm going to break out one of my bottle of Abbaye de Saint Bon Chien in a few days and throw those dregs in there. Those bugs should be more alcohol tolerant.

I'll look in to 71-B as a back-up.

 

[TNGabe]

Roseleare is notoriously weak as a fresh pitch, especially already having brett and bacteria built up. It's entirely possible you won't see much more attenuation at this point.

Why do you want more attenuation? 1.005 is going to be very dry for an almost 12% beer.

How's it tasting? What didn't you like about it before? Saddly, if you didn't like it before, adding a more yeast and grapes isn't likely to make it into a good beer.

 

[Austin_]

Some more attenuation would be good because it's still a little too sweet for my tastes. If I can get it down a between 1.010-1.005, I'll be happy.

It's not that it was a bad beer before, but rather it was a one trick pony.