Culturing Brett blend from a bottle

[tdogg]

I have been brewing for a while, but I am about to try my first brett beer. I asked a fellow homebrewer if he had experience with Brett, and he gave me two beers. One is a Biere de Garde with the Wyeast trappist blend, and the other is a brown ale with the Wyeast Olde ale blend. Both of these are limited edition blends (that i cant get anymore) with both a sacc strain and a brett strain.

I would like to culture the blends from both of these bottles for later use. Have any of you done this with a blend? Can I just pour the dregs into a small starter (like, in a 22 oz bomber) let it ferment out, cap it, label it, and store in the fridge until I need it? will this favor one strain over the other too much? Any tips are appreciated.

 

[ReverseApacheMaster]

I've never tried to culture both at the same time but a standard starter will favor the sacc strain because it's quicker off the blocks to ferment simple sugars and maltose. Brett is slow moving and likes a more acidic environment.

I don't think you're going to have a good opportunity to build up the brett without risking growing up disfunctional sacc cells. You're probably ok going the normal route for a starter. Just expect that it will take a long time for brett to do its thing in secondary in whatever beer you pitch it into.

 

[Calder]

Yes, you can do it. RAM is correct that the Sacc will muscle out the Brett in the battle for the simple sugars and ferment out most of the starter before the Brett gets going. The Brett will follow up reproduce anerobically and get to work on some of the more complex sugars. You would be better off buying one of the small rubber bottle stoppers (I think it is #2 size), putting an airlock in the top and leaving it.

When using Brett as a secondary yeast, you only pitch a small amount of Brett, this stresses the yeast resulting in a lot of the flavors.