Bottle conditioning with Brettanomyces

[zachattack698]

Going to be brewing up a belgian style robust porter here pretty soon. The plan is to primary ferment with a belgian yeast strain that has yet to be determined. I then plan on transferring from primary to secondary onto some cherries and aging it on those cherries for a few weeks. When it comes time to bottle it up I want to use a brett strain to bottle condition.

Here is my question, when should I add the brett? Do i just pitch it straight into the bottling bucket with the priming sugar? Do i need to make a starter for the brett? Is there a certain brett strain that is better for bottling that I should use?

Any help would be awesome! thanks!

 

[Pie_Man]

Adding Brett at bottling time is a little risky and something that I wouldn't attempt until you were really comfortable using Brett. Brett can consume sugars that ale yeasts cannot. Most people that use Brett add it to the fermenter and leave it alone for a while. By spiking your bottles with Brett you run the risk of exploding bottles since the Brett will ferment sugars inside the bottle. I'd use the champagne style bottle as it's stronger than typical beer bottles and can handle higher pressures.

 

[FarmerTed]

I would recommend pitching the brett into the secondary with the cherries; this will help prevent over-carbing the bottles, and will give you a head-start on developing the brett character you're looking for. I know that people add brett at bottling with no issues, but I'm pretty risk-averse and would not want to risk making a lot of bottle bombs.