Advice needed for unique project involving Brett.

[camonick]

I am doing an experiment for yet another Guinness clone. The recipe I am using is from a back issue of BYO magazine for clone recipes.
This recipe for a Guinness Foreign Extra stout is a 3 step process. The first step was to make a pale base wort with a base malt, flaked barley and the hops. Step 2 was to make a “color extract” using a small (1 gallon) mini mash with another small amount of base malt and roasted barley. Both of these were dosed with my main yeast and allowed to ferment out.
Step 3 was to make the “Guinness tang” by reserving 20 oz of the initial pale base and adding a small amount of Brett along with a tiny bit of the main yeast.
This was all a month ago. Naturally the pale base and “color extract” completed fermentation a couple weeks ago and are just hanging out in their fermenters still.
Here’s my main question.—
The small bottle of “tang” solution has a nice white bubbly pellicle on it. Is there an optimal time for it to develop the funky flavors? It is supposed to be heated to boiling and cooled then added to the keg along with the pale base and color extract at packaging time. I want to let the tang solution develop a nice flavor but I don’t want the other 2 components to stay in the fermenters much longer.
I know this might be crazy and may ultimately be a dumper, but what would some of you other folks think about the best timing to combine all these steps without compromising the integrity of each individual component? The final instructions for this is pretty vague.
Thanks
Nick

 

[hottpeper13]

Cool EXP, for me I would either take a FG reading ,brett will go to 1.002 or lower., or taste it and heat and pitch at the flavor you like.

 

[Jag75]

Yup , I was gonna say taste , then make your move.

 

[Miraculix]

Brett is not like the usual brewing yeast. It is not like "yep, final gravity, job done". The flavour will continue to change long time after fg has been reached. So I 2nd the taste approach. Btw. I do not know if the brett character will survive the boiling. I also never heard of guiness using any brett in their process, what I have heard is that they used to use SOURED wort, but not bretted wort. Huge difference. Anyway, very interesting experiment.

 

[camonick]

Btw. I do not know if the brett character will survive the boiling. I also never heard of guiness using any brett in their process, what I have heard is that they used to use SOURED wort, but not bretted wort.

The boiling is supposed to pasteurize it and keep the brett from going farther in the main mixture.
I’ve tried every Guinness “clone” I’ve seen, including a sour wort batch, and have never achieved anything close. My brother gave me this recipe when he was cleaning out some old magazines he had and thought I might want to try it. I decided to give it a shot and see what happens. I used WLP648. I don’t think they even use sour wort, but some proprietary flavoring. I know we could debate that all day long, because nobody really knows.
I’ll try to see if I can sneak a small sample to taste and see where it’s at. I don’t have much to spare.

 

[Miraculix]

The boiling is supposed to pasteurize it and keep the brett from going farther in the main mixture.
I’ve tried every Guinness “clone” I’ve seen, including a sour wort batch, and have never achieved anything close. My brother gave me this recipe when he was cleaning out some old magazines he had and thought I might want to try it. I decided to give it a shot and see what happens. I used WLP648. I don’t think they even use sour wort, but some proprietary flavoring. I know we could debate that all day long, because nobody really knows.
I’ll try to see if I can sneak a small sample to taste and see where it’s at. I don’t have much to spare.

Hmmm... I would honestly start with only pale ale malt plus roasted barley. I have made these type of stouts and with a clean yeast pus some time to age, they are really close.

BUT I do not want to discourage you from your experiment, I really like the idea and I would love to hear about the result.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

I have made these type of stouts and with a clean yeast pus some time to age, they are really close.

Part of the trouble is defining the target that you want to be close to - modern Guinness has come a long way from where it was even a few decades ago, and they're now using the full panoply of modern commercial techniques like hop extracts that home brewers may not have ready access to.

If you've not seen it, Boak & Bailey gained access to the archives of the head brewer at their London brewery in the mid-20th century, in 1939 they were adding beer from previous batches that had failed to drop clear (it was in the 1950s that Gilliland worked out the genetic basis of flocculation at the Guinness lab in Dublin), barm beer (intensely bitter, filtered from the yeast skimmed off the top that "adds very materially to the flavour of the flat, uninteresting storage vat beer") and old beer storage (OBS - beer that's been left to go off in wood). That's for the "regular" Guinness at least.

But the OBS would have been the only real source of Brett, and it was added in pretty small amounts, so Brett would not have been a big part of the flavour. By all accounts OBS is long gone now, and been replaced by lactic acid - modern Guinness has far more in common with lager than Orval, obsessing over oxygen levels and using every trick in the modern commercial brewer's playbook.

 

[Miraculix]

Part of the trouble is defining the target that you want to be close to - modern Guinness has come a long way from where it was even a few decades ago, and they're now using the full panoply of modern commercial techniques like hop extracts that home brewers may not have ready access to.

If you've not seen it, Boak & Bailey gained access to the archives of the head brewer at their London brewery in the mid-20th century, in 1939 they were adding beer from previous batches that had failed to drop clear (it was in the 1950s that Gilliland worked out the genetic basis of flocculation at the Guinness lab in Dublin), barm beer (intensely bitter, filtered from the yeast skimmed off the top that "adds very materially to the flavour of the flat, uninteresting storage vat beer") and old beer storage (OBS - beer that's been left to go off in wood). That's for the "regular" Guinness at least.

But the OBS would have been the only real source of Brett, and it was added in pretty small amounts, so Brett would not have been a big part of the flavour. By all accounts OBS is long gone now, and been replaced by lactic acid - modern Guinness has far more in common with lager than Orval, obsessing over oxygen levels and using every trick in the modern commercial brewer's playbook.

Wow, that is incredible. That is probably the most complicated blending technique I have seen. Go home solera, here comes old school guiness!!

 

[camonick]

I really like the idea and I would love to hear about the result.

I will certainly update this thread when I get this kegged and pull a pint.

 

[camonick]

Hopefully this is at least drinkable. I haven’t had an Irish stout on tap for a long time.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

Wow, that is incredible. That is probably the most complicated blending technique I have seen. Go home solera, here comes old school guiness!!

I guess the way to look at it is that adding a small amount of very-gone-off beer is a nod to the flavours of blending larger amounts of not-so-gone-off stock ale, but the rest of it is just recycling "waste" beer from every part of the process and pretending that's how it's meant to taste...

 

[camonick]

Last night I used a sanitized plastic drinking straw like a mini wine thief to take a sample of the Brett fermented bottle. It’s definitely getting some sour characteristics, but not anything that would make your lips pucker yet. I think what I might do is combine the pale base and 1 gallon color extract in a keg to help preserve them. I’ll let the Brett bottle mature a little longer and keep sampling it, then try to figure out a good way to combine it and get it mixed well with the kegged beer. Maybe I used the wrong strain of Brett? The recipe didn’t say.
The more I think about it, it probably would have been way easier to just purchase a commercial sour and pasteurize it instead of messing around with what I’m doing.

 

[tdf]

Brettanomyces isn't going to produce lactic acid, which is what makes the "sour" in sour beers. You'll need one of the lactic acid producing bacteria for that.

Most brett strains will produce fruity and/or funky barnyard "horse blanket" style flavors. If you get enough oxygen exposure it might produce enough acetic acid to get a vinegar flavor, but if you're after traditional sour flavors, brettanomyces isn't what you're looking for.

 

[camonick]

Brettanomyces isn't going to produce lactic acid, which is what makes the "sour" in sour beers. You'll need one of the lactic acid producing bacteria for that.

Most brett strains will produce fruity and/or funky barnyard "horse blanket" style flavors. If you get enough oxygen exposure it might produce enough acetic acid to get a vinegar flavor, but if you're after traditional sour flavors, brettanomyces isn't what you're looking for.

Duly noted. I guess I have been misguided and a little naïve about certain beer styles. Now I am even more confused. The descriptions for some of the Brett yeasts available mention sour characteristics. Everyone always talks about the “Guinness tang“ but that is a flavor I have never picked up. Yes, Guinness definitely has a unique flavor, but I would never describe it as tangy or sour. As I mentioned before, I have tried just about everything possible. I have used a little bit of lactic acid, sour beer, sour wort, sauergut, etc.. I will definitely taste of this before the Brett addition, and after to see if there is any noticeable difference, or if it’s best just left alone.

 

[DBhomebrew]

Some of the problem comes from most of the descriptions about brett being overly broad. Saying "brett provides barnyard flavors" is akin to saying "sacc provides spicy flavors." Well, sure. Many of the Belgians, saisons, and northern UK saccs do.

The key questions*: Which brett did you use? In what environment were they pitched? Was it co-pitched?

*This is rhetorical, I know you answered most if not if not all of these above.

**Also, don't forget brett flavor keeps developing even after its fermentation is done.

 

[camonick]

The key questions*: Which brett did you use? In what environment were they pitched? Was it co-pitched?

*This is rhetorical, I know you answered most if not if not all of these above.

**Also, don't forget brett flavor keeps developing even after its fermentation is done.

Just so folks can follow along…
I used

Brettanomyces bruxellensis Trois Vrai​

Co-pitched with a tiny bit of Nottingham. It’s in a wine bottle in my furnace room which stays warmer than the rest of the house, I don’t know the exact temp.
It’s such a small amount and like mentioned above, the flavor might not survive the pasteurization process.
It’s been about 5 weeks now and I’ll try to let it go another 4-5 if I can stand it.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

Everyone always talks about the “Guinness tang“ but that is a flavor I have never picked up.

That's a bit like "people always talking" about cassette players and CD players in cars - but they're meaningless to anyone who's bought a car from the last 10 years or so.

Guinness has moved on - it used to have complexity that isn't there any more, thanks to barm beer and OBS.

 

[camonick]

Update:
I gave the little bottle of brett 2 months. I pasteurized it and added to the rest of the “Guinness” brew. It’s definitely a unique flavor and as suggested above, not the right flavor. It’s ok, but not great. I won’t do it again. Definitely not a Guinness clone by any stretch. I wonder if whoever wrote the recipe for the BYO article actually tasted the final product and compared it to a real Guinness. I don’t think it would make any difference, but it’s supposedly a clone for the Foreign Extra Stout version and I’m serving mine on nitro like the Draught version. I don’t think carbonation would change the way it tastes too much.