Bootleg Biology: Mad Fermentationist Brett Saison

[Andrew Hodgson]

It's been a month since the TYB207 and dried cherries went into my dark saison on cherries. Will be packaging Friday or Saturday and will try to hold off two weeks to try the first bottle, anticipating it will reach it's peak a month after packaging or so. Airlock still smells cherry-forward but with some nice complexity.

 

[Andrew Hodgson]

Well, I got 83% attenuation out of this, a little disappointing as it went from 1.076 to 1.012 for 8.4%. These numbers don't include the fruit addition but it was dried fruit so it may be a tad higher than that.

Wasn't expecting this blend to poop out with a starter on this size of a beer, not a huge deal I can blend in some saison yeast so next time I can get the 90% + attenuation I am looking for, anyone else have this blend leave a little more sweetness than they thought? Used a 2L starter and nutes etc.

 

[brownni5]

Well, I got 83% attenuation out of this, a little disappointing as it went from 1.076 to 1.012 for 8.4%. These numbers don't include the fruit addition but it was dried fruit so it may be a tad higher than that.

Wasn't expecting this blend to poop out with a starter on this size of a beer, not a huge deal I can blend in some saison yeast so next time I can get the 90% + attenuation I am looking for, anyone else have this blend leave a little more sweetness than they thought? Used a 2L starter and nutes etc.

I don't understand why this beer didn't really dry out. How long ago was it pitched? At what temp? Really would expect 90%+ AA.

Was the starter built from a previous cake? Just wondering if there was some shift in culture composition.

 

[Andrew Hodgson]

It was pitched from a 2L starter fresh pouch, had fermentation activity as normal for a week and it died down, I dropped 4lb of dried cherries and some TYB207 brett in it and let it sit for another month. Not a huge deal a little disappointing but honestly this will likely make the beer more palatable for the masses with the residual sweetness and like I said I can supplement a saison yeast from my stash.

In hindsight I should have taken a sample and checked gravity before adding the fruit nut haven't had a saison under attenuate before, lesson learned.

 

[brownni5]

Trying to dial in my table Saison beers. On 6/29 I brewed one that came out to 1.039 OG:
84% pils
8% raw wheat
4% Munich
4% oats
Some "aged" Fuggles at 60 min
1/2 oz Styrian Celeia at FO

Loosely based on JK Das Wunderkind

Wanted to keep the IBU low, but enough to keep the lacto in check. Pitched the Mad Fermentationist blend at about 65, let it go for a couple days in my basement then out to my garage for a little finishing heat. My brews don't want to climb too high when in my basement - good for lots of ales, not my Saisons!

Just checked it tonight - coming along nicely, 1.002 (95% AA), a little tart - not really sour at all - good phenols, just a touch of earthy funk which I will imagine will develop with time.

I contemplated adding 2.5 lbs of fresh apricots I got yesterday, but that seems like it would be a waste of fruit (at least 1 lb/gallon is recommended). I think I'll keg with a healthy dry hop charge in a couple weeks

This is my second go with this blend, and I think it's more impressive with the repitch. Just one guy's opinion...

 

[goodolarchie]

Glad to see this thread keeping good notes on the blend. I really like it, and have all but made it my house primary strain. I only say that because I don't really have one for saisons / mixed ferm, I have a few Solera barrels and one of them uses this.

On the sacch side, I think this blend performs excellent, accentuates well (no stall here) and leaves a nice tart finish. My notes seem to match what Mike said, I don't think the Brett is assertive nor the lactic aggressive. My ~4 IBU aged hops went down to 3.75pH, and that's as low of IBUs as I've tried.

I just pitched this into a new barrel with dregs, fresh oak, and about 20 IBU of spelt saison at 1.048. Those dregs will be more aggressive but I do really enjoy the base sacch, I'd buy it as a purely clean isolated saison blend. I'm also a fan of Dupont 3724 and Saisonsteins Monster, FWIW. Will update on that barrel in months to come.

 

[jready]

This has also become my “house” saison yeast. It’s easy to control the tartness and there is just enough funk to initiate the uninitiated.

 

[idkwhatimbrewing]

Made a funky dark saison inspired by the Mad Fermentationist recipes. Finally got around to kegging the this beer which I brewed 8/12/2017.

Grain Bill:
6# Bohemian Pilsner
3.75# White Wheat
3# Caravienna
0.75# Flaked Wheat
0.38# Special B
0.38# Acid Malt

Hops:
Saaz 4 IBUs

Other Additions:
1# D-180 Candi Syrup
32oz Just Tart Cherry Juice

OG: 1.066
FG: 1.010

Mash pH: 5.16
Final pH: 3.40

Plan is to force carb to 1 volume and then bottle from keg with CBC-1, cherry juice and dextrose to 2.75 volumes.

 

[brownni5]

Trying to dial in my table Saison beers. On 6/29 I brewed one that came out to 1.039 OG:
84% pils
8% raw wheat
4% Munich
4% oats
Some "aged" Fuggles at 60 min
1/2 oz Styrian Celeia at FO

Loosely based on JK Das Wunderkind

Wanted to keep the IBU low, but enough to keep the lacto in check. Pitched the Mad Fermentationist blend at about 65, let it go for a couple days in my basement then out to my garage for a little finishing heat. My brews don't want to climb too high when in my basement - good for lots of ales, not my Saisons!

Just checked it tonight - coming along nicely, 1.002 (95% AA), a little tart - not really sour at all - good phenols, just a touch of earthy funk which I will imagine will develop with time.

I contemplated adding 2.5 lbs of fresh apricots I got yesterday, but that seems like it would be a waste of fruit (at least 1 lb/gallon is recommended). I think I'll keg with a healthy dry hop charge in a couple weeks

This is my second go with this blend, and I think it's more impressive with the repitch. Just one guy's opinion...

Just cracked this for the first time the other day - by far my best mixed- ferm Saison to date. I dry-hopped with 1 oz Strisselspalt (I love Continental hops).

On the nose I get a.lot of barnyard aromas. I couldn't reconcile that until I read my notes - I also pitched the dregs of another mixed ferm Saison that I brewed with Omega C2C - that blend gets really horsey for me.

The taste is tart - perfectly so - with lots of nice stone fruits and spice, I would imagine both from the hops and primary yeast. At 3.2 volumes and all the raw grain, the mouthfeel is substantial for a beer finishing at 1.002 (or lower now).

I need to brew with this again!

 

[cactusgarrett]

let it sit for another month

Maybe I'm off, here, but doesn't it take much longer for brett to bring everything down closer to 1.000? Were you expecting the saison sacc to fermenter lower or the brett to?

I'm doing a deeper dive into belgian-y beers lately, and in reading Stan's "Brew Like a Monk", I read a passage in there stating something along the lines of (i'm paraphrasing) belgian yeast often do 90% of the fermentation up front and quickly, but it takes a long time for that renaming 10%. All in all, i'm wondering if just more time would have gotten you to where you wanted (either from the sacc or the brett). Or maybe a warmer ferment? I don't remember seeing what temp you fermented/aged at.

 

[cactusgarrett]

This thread has inspired me to look into using this, but it appears it's Out of Stock. Any ideas as to when this would be available again?

 

[jready]

This thread has inspired me to look into using this, but it appears it's Out of Stock. Any ideas as to when this would be available again?

Usually quarterly Jeff will do a release. Sign up for the email notifications and you will be notified of preorders.

 

[brownni5]

This thread has inspired me to look into using this, but it appears it's Out of Stock. Any ideas as to when this would be available again?

Just missed it - they had a sale earlier this month.

 

[cmhaynes]

I recently had a very strange experience with this blend. I bought 2 packs back in August when they had a release. I used one of those packs without a starter in October, and that beer fermented about how I would have expected. Well, I wasn't able to use the next pack until January, so it was 5 months old at that point. I made a starter, and it acted sort of weird. It never developed a krausen, but it definitely fermented out. (I know starters don't always form krausens, but this blend had done so in the past.) I made a low-gravity (1.040) beer heavily hopped with noble hops (36 IBUs), and it fermented out just fine. I also added Jester King dregs to the fermenter when I dry-hopped at the tail-end of fermentation. The weird part is that the beer got much more tart than I would have expected, and there were virtually no saison-like esters (maybe because of the acidity?). The beer isn't bad, but I intentionally added lots of hops to prevent it from getting this tart, so that's pretty disappointing. Also, it is tart enough that it clashes a bit with the bitterness.

 

[goodolarchie]

I also added Jester King dregs to the fermenter when I dry-hopped at the tail-end of fermentation. The weird part is that the beer got much more tart than I would have expected, and there were virtually no saison-like esters (maybe because of the acidity?).

Jester King dregs are going to have all kinds of microflora, including some hop tolerant LAB. Brett will metabolize quite a few esters and phenols as well, see here: http://www.milkthefunk.com/wiki/Brettanomyces#Secondary_Metabolites ... So the key question is how long has the beer been inoculated with those dregs?

 

[cmhaynes]

Jester King dregs are going to have all kinds of microflora, including some hop tolerant LAB. Brett will metabolize quite a few esters and phenols as well, see here: http://www.milkthefunk.com/wiki/Brettanomyces#Secondary_Metabolites ... So the key question is how long has the beer been inoculated with those dregs?

This beer was brewed around the middle of January and was only in primary for about 2 weeks. I added the JK dregs maybe 3 days into the fermentation. It's been in the bottles for about 5 weeks now. So, the dregs have had roughly 7 weeks. What's interesting is that the last few bottles of Le Petit Prince haven't been even close to this tart, and they were much older. It just occurred to me, though, that since I added the dregs, I won't know for sure what created the acidity unless I brew with the blend by itself again. Ha...oh well. I think with some age, this could turn into a pretty good beer.

 

[RPh_Guy]

the beer got much more tart than I would have expected, and there were virtually no saison-like esters

I added the JK dregs maybe 3 days into the fermentation.

Acidity mutes yeast flavor. In this case the bacteria in the dregs produced acidity early in fermentation and suppress the flavor expression of your primary yeast. The beer flavor was also likely suppressed.

You need to add the dregs after primary fermentation completes. You'd also benefit from using aged hops, which inhibit the bacteria but less bitterness.

It might improve over time, but it won't develop the "Saison esters" (actually you're probably taking about phenolics) you want.

 

[goodolarchie]

I added the JK dregs maybe 3 days into the fermentation. It's been in the bottles for about 5 weeks now. So, the dregs have had roughly 7 weeks. What's interesting is that the last few bottles of Le Petit Prince haven't been even close to this tart, and they were much older.

There are a lot of factors that could have led to the increased acidity, but generally speaking, throwing spontaneous dregs (such as JK, Allagash, De Garde, and any true lambic) is a YOLO, especially only 3 days in. Don't get me wrong, my best beers have used dregs, but I don't go into them expecting to recreate that beer. Throwing LAB at higher pH wort with lots of fermentable sugars has a lot of metabolic paths to add acidity. Some brett strains even produce a genuine tartness, and don't care about your IBUs. I have one brett strain I co-pitch with Sacch in primary, it routinely gets the beer down to 3.7pH in 4 weeks. Hell, even some sacch strains can finish quite tart, and now Lallemand has their sourvisiae.

Like RPh said, if you want saison phenols like the classic 4vg (clove, spice), you should delay pitching a culture like MFB. You can also ramp up the heat, underpitch, do other things to stress the yeast out, but this can lead to mixed results. Pitching from a new packet I get some phenols early on and the brett is somewhat mild, and stonefruity. But compared to using Dupont then Orval strains / dregs, I get a much more phenolic beer. Bottom line, pitching such diverse dregs that early on means you have gone completely offroad, and there is no real map other than the one you chart for yourself.

 

[cmhaynes]

Acidity mutes yeast flavor. In this case the bacteria in the dregs produced acidity early in fermentation and suppress the flavor expression of your primary yeast. The beer flavor was also likely suppressed.

You need to add the dregs after primary fermentation completes. You'd also benefit from using aged hops, which inhibit the bacteria but less bitterness.

It might improve over time, but it won't develop the "Saison esters" (actually you're probably taking about phenolics) you want.

Yeah, I guessed the acidity had suppressed the expression of the yeast. A couple of years ago, I made a similar batch without the dregs, and the hops did seem to inhibit the lacto strain in the blend. I just greatly underestimated the JK dregs. I thought 6 ounces of hops (throughout the process, including a dry-hop) in a 3.5-gallon batch would keep the bacteria at bay. When I said I hoped it would improve with a bit of age, I meant once the bitterness fades a little. I realize the saison phenolics won't ever be a part of this beer. Thanks for the advice.

 

[cmhaynes]

There are a lot of factors that could have led to the increased acidity, but generally speaking, throwing spontaneous dregs (such as JK, Allagash, De Garde, and any true lambic) is a YOLO, especially only 3 days in. Don't get me wrong, my best beers have used dregs, but I don't go into them expecting to recreate that beer. Throwing LAB at higher pH wort with lots of fermentable sugars has a lot of metabolic paths to add acidity. Some brett strains even produce a genuine tartness, and don't care about your IBUs. I have one brett strain I co-pitch with Sacch in primary, it routinely gets the beer down to 3.7pH in 4 weeks. Hell, even some sacch strains can finish quite tart, and now Lallemand has their sourvisiae.

Like RPh said, if you want saison phenols like the classic 4vg (clove, spice), you should delay pitching a culture like MFB. You can also ramp up the heat, underpitch, do other things to stress the yeast out, but this can lead to mixed results. Pitching from a new packet I get some phenols early on and the brett is somewhat mild, and stonefruity. But compared to using Dupont then Orval strains / dregs, I get a much more phenolic beer. Bottom line, pitching such diverse dregs that early on means you have gone completely offroad, and there is no real map other than the one you chart for yourself.

Thanks for such a well-thought-out reply. I just greatly underestimated the contribution of the JK dregs pitched so early. Next time, I'll add them at bottling. I didn't expect to recreate any JK beers, just to make something inspired by them. I mentioned Petit Prince above because the most recent bottles I've had of it have only been the slightest bit tart, so I'm very curious as to how JK controls the acidity in it.

 

[goodolarchie]

I'm very curious as to how JK controls the acidity in it.

Hops, temperature, oxygen control, and blending generally. It's worth noting that what lives on in the dregs are NOT 1:1 with what did most of the work to make the beer in primary for them. It's a big'ol competition, and when a lot of the early strains die out, the strong survive. Sometimes the strong can do a really good job souring even hoppy wort. I love dregs, I call it cutting in line, but it's jesus-take-the-wheel.

 

[cactusgarrett]

This thread has inspired me to look into using this, but it appears it's Out of Stock. Any ideas as to when this would be available again?

Finally available again! Cheers to BB and them getting this filled and shipped out ASAP!

 

[brownni5]

Would it have been too difficult to have it available last week when I ordered the Berliner Blend and GF Oslo? Might have made me feel better about the shipping...

 

[cactusgarrett]

Right? At least I was able to snag some this time - I felt like a schmuck jumping on it so quickly, but when i checked back a few hours later it was all sold out. Sounds like This Is The Way, with this one.

 

[brownni5]

Ok, I just cracked open a bottle brewed with MF last spring. For the first 9 months or so, it was dull - really dull. Then it started to come around. Now it's apricot candy. Nothing but actual fruit should taste this good. No acidity from the lacto - too wimpy to deal with the hops.

1.036 I think, mostly pils, some wheat, Munich and flaked rye. Hopped with H Blanc and Styrian Goldings to maybe 20 IBU.

 

[brownni5]

The blend is once again available online. Seems they're making cultures available more often, perhaps just during the pandemic?

 

[cactusgarrett]

Finally got a chance to make a saison with it. Amazing. I'll definitely maintaining a slurry of this in my brewhouse for as long as i can.

 

[goodolarchie]

I have a keg of MFB saison that's now 12+ months old, at 4 IBU it got quite sour, too lactic at first. But now it has a wonderful raspberry lemonade quality, I've been using it as souring stock for all-brett beers that need a little boost. I also managed to snag last week's propagation from jeff... wish I could have gotten the berliner culture.

 

[user 263363]

I snagged a pack of this a couple days ago. My plan is to brew a low abv "table beer" style brew with it for late summer enjoyment. I think I've about collected enough thick bottles to bottle a batch in. It seems most people here are going with moderate to high abv with this mixed culture. Will there really be any downfall to a lower abv (less than 4%) using this?

 

[brownni5]

I snagged a pack of this a couple days ago. My plan is to brew a low abv "table beer" style brew with it for late summer enjoyment. I think I've about collected enough thick bottles to bottle a batch in. It seems most people here are going with moderate to high abv with this mixed culture. Will there really be any downfall to a lower abv (less than 4%) using this?

See my post above. A 1.036 beer (right around 4% ABV) turned out fantastic, but it took a while. It's been some time since I brewed a Saison above 1.042 - I love low gravity farmhouse beers!