Brett B Trois - Paint thinner

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craigevo

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I have no experience in brewing 100% bretts before. Any help much appreciated.

I brewed a saison with brett B Trois - I pitched an estimated 200 Bln cells into 5 gallons of 1044 wort and fermented starting at 18 C and going up to 24 over a week.

It smelled at tasted ok after two weeks - tasted not particularly funky, quite bland. smelled quite nice, banana, and other nice fruity esters.

One month after pitching, I am now looking to crash cool and keg it, its done - nothing much obvious going on and FG at 1005. that 88% attentuation.

it stinks of paint thinner/nail polish remover. tastes of it a bit as well, but it would be hard not to smell it whilst tasting !

what to do, crash and keg and hope the ethyl acetate will go away with cold conditioning.

Or leave it warm and hope the brett reprocesses it?
 
i can't help you with the ethyl acetate question. i dunno if the brett will re-absorb it, or if it will age out. weird that it wasn't there right after primary and that it's appeared after a month.

however:

I brewed a saison with brett B Trois - I pitched an estimated 200 Bln cells into 5 gallons of 1044 wort and fermented starting at 18 C and going up to 24 over a week.

It smelled at tasted ok after two weeks - tasted not particularly funky, quite bland. smelled quite nice, banana, and other nice fruity esters.

if you made a 100% brett beer, it won't be funky. brett as the (sole) primary yeast is clean. brett only makes the funk when used after sacch.
 
Well its six months on now - I left it in a carboy at room temp, but still not much reduction in acetone.

I have just added some fresh brett B ( WY5112) from a starter that I made for an orval clone I am making. Will see if that does anything.
 
Well its six months on now - I left it in a carboy at room temp, but still not much reduction in acetone.

I have just added some fresh brett B ( WY5112) from a starter that I made for an orval clone I am making. Will see if that does anything.

I'm 99.9% certain adding more brett won't do anything. Once you have an excess of acetic acid and it has converted to ethyl acetate in a concentration where you perceive solvent, I'm pretty sure you're screwed. I've got a wild quad with figs that's wondering towards solvent and despite being one of my more expensive beers and having some really good redeaming qualities, it's going to have to go soon.
 
I'm 99.9% certain adding more brett won't do anything. Once you have an excess of acetic acid and it has converted to ethyl acetate in a concentration where you perceive solvent, I'm pretty sure you're screwed. I've got a wild quad with figs that's wondering towards solvent and despite being one of my more expensive beers and having some really good redeaming qualities, it's going to have to go soon.

That's been my experience. I've let one go for 2+ years, and the acetone has not improved at all, unfortunately. From what I have read, ethyl acetate has a fairly high threshold, so you may be able to blend the beer down. This article talks about the threshold being 33ppm... I don't know how much is in our beers are though, so I don't know if blending it down will work. I might try doing a small sample blend soon to see if cutting that ester down will correct the beer.

Has anyone tried this?
 
That's been my experience. I've let one go for 2+ years, and the acetone has not improved at all, unfortunately. From what I have read, ethyl acetate has a fairly high threshold, so you may be able to blend the beer down. This article talks about the threshold being 33ppm... I don't know how much is in our beers are though, so I don't know if blending it down will work. I might try doing a small sample blend soon to see if cutting that ester down will correct the beer.

Has anyone tried this?

In smaller quantities, it's ethyl acetate can be perceived as fruity amongst other positive flavors. Wild Brews lists the threshold for etyhl lactate at 60ppm, but I don't see a figure for ethyl acetate.

I'm sure blending could work if the beer was kegged and consumed fairly quickly. I'm worried the acetic acid is from acetobacter and if I blend and bottle that will end up crap too. I'll let it ride a while and if the acetic acid doesn't get worse think about testing some blends, but I'd rather dump than mess up another batch. Vinegar and nail polish remover is gross.
 
On an interesting note, I just got done tasting and doing a small amount of blending with my ethyl acetate sour... I was surprised to find that a lot of that seems to be gone, although the beer burns a little going down the throat. There are some higher alcohols there I believe (the starting wort gravity was around 1.084). Overall though it actually tasted pretty decent today.

I tried blending it with a 100% B. Clustersianus from ECY (lots of citra hops), and the beer was better on it's own. I'm quite surprised right now actually. Perhaps it wasn't ethyl acetate that I was tasting before. It's only one gallon, so I could blend it with something else, or just bottle it straight. I'm not sure what to do with it at this point. I have another sour beer that I will try some small sample blending with and see how that goes. I'll have to cam up and throw that onto my youtube channel.
 
I would like to know more about that as well . Also I have a Red ale I pitched Brett B into a week after I put it in primary. It's only just over two weeks at this point ad tastes fine but I did get a big " paint thinner " Whiff when I first opened the fermentor but didn't smell it in the sample after. Should I be worried or is this ok ?


Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew
 
Is ethyl acetate more or less common in underpitched brett beers or mixed culture sour beers?

I'd file this in the 'anyone who gives a definitive answer is full of crap' category. I'd guess it's more common with mixed fermentations as I feel that a fair bit of acetic acid is required in the first place.

The beer I have with ethyl acetate keeps expanding - I think the figs are holding CO2. I had to pull another sample as the beer was pushing into the airlock and *very* surprised to find the paint thinner aroma and flavor has greatly diminsihed from the last sample. Still not good, but much less terrible.
 
I'd file this in the 'anyone who gives a definitive answer is full of crap' category. I'd guess it's more common with mixed fermentations as I feel that a fair bit of acetic acid is required in the first place.

The beer I have with ethyl acetate keeps expanding - I think the figs are holding CO2. I had to pull another sample as the beer was pushing into the airlock and *very* surprised to find the paint thinner aroma and flavor has greatly diminsihed from the last sample. Still not good, but much less terrible.

Interesting, so there is a bit hope. Good to hear that your beer might be improving.

I've had this happen now twice with brett beers, most recently noticed it in a gravity sample of a rye saison w/ an older vial of wlp670 farmhouse + wlp brett B. I'm thinking of adding some maltodextrin and honey and JP dregs to see if it might clean up over time.
 
I have a similar beer in my fermenter now. Simple recipe. Fermented with Wyeast 5112.

It's been in the fermenter 5 weeks. It has a lot going on. But some nail polish remover/paint thinner in the background.

I checked the history of this fermenter and noticed that the previous beer was a beer where I noticed nail polish remover too. This is a plastic bucket. I could have an "infected" fermenter, maybe it's time to throw this fermenter out..
 
Well, two years on and I still have the beer in the carboy. The paint thinner has diminished considerably ( not completely) , but I can now drink it ! before I could not even get my nose over the glass !

Still, it is hot, boozy hot. not hugely, and after getting past that I can taste the beer is quite nice. tastes soft somehow.

I did a few things and I am not sure what made the difference. But heres what I did:

1. Co2 purging
2. swapping a couple of litres for fresh wort. so more fermenting, and i guess that meant more co2 purging.
3. adding Pedio (3 months ago)

I have just swapped another couple of litres out and its fermenting again. so hopefully in a few months (all the time at 30 degrees C!) it might be bottle-able.

I did actually bottle two beers before I started with the above 3 steps. I tried one of the bottles at the same time as I tried a carboy sample taste. Very very different. the bottled beer still stunk to high heaven of paint thinner and I could barely drink it. so something different has been happening in the carboy.

Anyone care to guess how long the pedio will take to sour it ? its a tad sour already, but really not much. The ph is still the same as before pitching the pedio - 3.7
 
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