Search results

Can't think of one, in fact I'd encourage you to add more microbes in the form of dregs from a few bottles of your favorite gueuze!

I've heard a number of stories of yeast labs not selling pure cultures, but I have no experience with RVA. Why not shoot them an email and see what they say?

You are correct. What strain/source is it? If you have CO2 production you either have heterofermentative Lacto, or homofermentative Lacto and something else.

Racking is always the better option, less chance of oxidation and a mess. Yep, enough for my tastes and those beers. Pull samples as it ages and see what tastes good to you. Small barrels have a high surface-to-volume ratio, so they extract oak character much faster than big barrels. As a...

I didn't top my 5 gallons barrels off, but then they had enough oak character after about 4 months. If you were aging much longer than that, the temperature was high, or the humidity was low, it would be a good idea. Ideally you’d make a 6-7 gallon batch of the base beer. Pitch the same...

I find that pitching rehydrated wine yeast at bottling reduces the amount/duration of the flavor. Having something besides the Brett consume the priming sugar.

The two leading candidates are diacetyl and tetrahydropyridines (toasty at low levels, "mouse taint" aka urine at higher). I’m inclined towards the latter, but I know where diacetyl goes (converted to 2,3-Butanediol), while I’m unsure what path if any is available for the destruction...

Cheers! Here are the tasting notes for #5 (aka Saison de Membrillo). Might be the most interesting of the bunch. Shared it with a couple brewers at Bluejacket while I was assisting on blending a historic tart-porter-ish thing, and one of them just said "I could sell that for a whole bunch of...

Rodenbach holds their foeders at ~59F. Low temperature will certainly slow the microbes, but they'll get back to work when things warm up.

If they are reasonably fresh packs, say around a month since manufacturing, I bet you’d be fine. I’ve had good luck with all sorts of primary strains (Belgian, English, American, lager etc.) I tend to use whatever I have on hand. Belgian is certainly the classic, and seems to speed up the...

I'm a big fan of Roeselare for big/dark sours. Whatever strain you use, I'd suggest pitching some brewer's yeast as well to ensure a quick/complete primary fermentation. You can pitch the blend in primary at the same time, but it likely won't have enough cells for such a big beer.

The bacteria that causes botulism really only thrives in an anaerobic environment (usually created by the canning process). As far as I am aware the risk of creating botulism toxin during a standard spontaneous fermentation is essentially zero. Like botulism (where it is the toxin not the...

Brewers Publications is on a kick of using "simpler" titles (e.g., IPA, Yeast). I was told it is more to make the sale to book buyers than consumers. If it had been up to me it would have been Mad Fermentations: yada yada. Cheers!

It wasn't the subject, it was your wording.

My book certainly dabbles in the Belgian, German, and English sour/funky beer traditions, but those weren’t the primary focus because Jeff Sparrow, Stan Hieronymus, and Ron Pattinson respectively beat me to the punch! It starts out with an overview of those country's traditions, and includes...

Butyric is converted to an ester (ethyl butyrate), so it isn’t like it needs to off-gas. As a result it should clean up in the bottle just as well as it would in bulk, however it could be more variable bottle-to-bottle. Conversion isn’t complete, but because the level is low...

Tapped my experimental “how to phenols influence Brett” batch last weekend. Initial results were… surprising. The Belgian primary (w/ ferulic rest) batch was as expected, although not as funky as I would have hopped for nearly four months old. On the other hand the English...

I assume Wyeast Brett lambicus? The fruitiness seems like it would play better with those hops than the big funkiness of White Lab's strain (although maybe it is mellower in primary).

Trinity does a similar process for Red Swingline, their Brett blend is Brux, Trois, and an isolate from New Belgium (if I'm correctly interpreting the cryptic "bouckaertii"). I think anything fruity works well with Brett. Simcoe has a range, some is very tropical, some more dank piney. The...

I think you'd be much better served to sour the wort with a culture (from a lab or otherwise) rather than the mash. Much easier to control, and less risk of gamey-footy off-flavors. I'm a big advocate for always pitching a healthy culture of brewer's yeast along with bottle dregs. Nice to...