EBY/BBA Brettanomyces Experiment

[kerosin]

I experienced slower growth rates for the following strains:

EBY005 (B. cantillon I), EBY008 (B. cantillon II), EBY009 (B. cantillon III), EBY011 (B. cantillon V), EBY013 (B. cantillon VII) and EBY016 (B. lembeek I).

Cheers, Sam

 

[Roy2Ventullo]

Sorry for not replying here in a while. I have been reading all the posts though. I will publish some preliminary data about the individual strains tomorrow which I collected during the cultivation process of getting the strains ready to ship. And I am currently stepping up the yeasts as well to do my part of the experiment.

@Roy: You did count the cells, right? I assume by microscopy. Do you experienced any "abnormalities" by looking at the different samples in terms of contamination etc? I am surprised to read about sour flavors of the yeasts as previously mentioned in this thread and would be interested to know if this might be due to an infection.

Concerning the lag times. I have no idea how long Bretts need to adapt from aerobic growth (starter) to anaerobic (fermentation). I do have some kinetic growth data for the individual conditions but not for the transition from aerobic to anaerobic or vice versa. I assume the lag times are rather from the adaptation to the new environment rather than the cold treatment. I however have no empirical proof for my hypothesis here. The cold treatment's effect on the lag times just seem less likely to me.

Cheers, Sam

@Sam One of my students used a haemocytometer at 400x to count yeast. She did not notice bacteria in any samples but we will check Monday with phase contrast microscope.
Also did not taste but smelled the 15 ml cultures. Maybe sour was poor choice of words....funky is probably better description

 

[brewguyver]

@Sam One of my students used a haemocytometer at 400x to count yeast. She did not notice bacteria in any samples but we will check Monday with phase contrast microscope.
Also did not taste but smelled the 15 ml cultures. Maybe sour was poor choice of words....funky is probably better description

I just pitched my 20 into gallon jugs. I think sour is a great description for a few the samples and funk music great description for the rest. I got a great mouth puckering smell from either 001 or 002 and various horse/blanket/barnyard aromas from most of the others.

I'll give specific details when I get home on Friday, but SWMBO Let me know that there was already a Krausen forming in about a quarter of the Carboys.

As an aside, has anyone who topped off their "carboys" had blowoff issues? I saw a few snapshots of full growlers being used. If not, I may want to bottle less of the "favorites" from this experiment and top those off with fresh wort.

 

[brewguyver]

5 days later and most of the fermenters are active. I had a burning desire to post a few pics in the "is this infected?" section, but decided not to cause trouble. I'll post pictures in the morning.

 

[brewguyver]

Pictures of 1 week. Some of these kicked off pretty fast - 001 and 002 aren't doing much.

 

[Roy2Ventullo]

Pictures of 1 week. Some of these kicked off pretty fast - 001 and 002 aren't doing much.

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Brewguyver:

Differences in fermentation looks familiar. I now have all 20 going although they started at quite different times. Last two just started producing gas last weekend, 3 weeks after pitching. About 10 have stopped producing gas and yeast are settling. Wondering if I should rack those first ones off the krausen/yeastbed to secondary while the rest finish up although I recall Sam mentioned we might bottle directly from primary? Just want to be sure we do not pick up any bad taste from yeast/trub.
Roy

 

[ChugachBrewing]

So.... I got a little nutso, brewed a 50 gallon batch, and pitched all 20 strains into one barrel. It currently has a slimy consistency... rather, it's all super slimy. Thoughts? I've never experienced this in all my years of brewing sours.

 

[brewguyver]

So.... I got a little nutso, brewed a 50 gallon batch, and pitched all 20 strains into one barrel. It currently has a slimy consistency... rather, it's all super slimy. Thoughts? I've never experienced this in all my years of brewing sours.

Do you think the sliminess carries over from your starters? I didn't have a similar experience (although I did have some jelly-like pelecules floating), but I let my 2nd step go almost a month. I also did only 200 ml starters.

How's it smell/taste?

 

[ChugachBrewing]

First batch I've been afraid to taste

Some starters were slightly slimy. Smells good. was talking to Mike Tonsmeire... he confirmed what i had thought... "Pediococcus produces exopolysaccharides, long chains of sugars. Nothing to worry about, some brewers claim it is an important stage. Brett will break them down over the next few weeks or months. I've only seen it once, really freaky."

 

[Brewbien]

First batch I've been afraid to taste

Some starters were slightly slimy. Smells good. was talking to Mike Tonsmeire... he confirmed what i had thought... "Pediococcus produces exopolysaccharides, long chains of sugars. Nothing to worry about, some brewers claim it is an important stage. Brett will break them down over the next few weeks or months. I've only seen it once, really freaky."

Did you pitch pedio also or was it already in the barrel? Confused on why your starters slimey?

 

[Roy2Ventullo]

All 20 cultures at 4 weeks or so. Few on the left still going. Rest are settling out.

 

[brewguyver]

All 20 cultures at 4 weeks or so. Few on the left still going. Rest are settling out.

Was wondering about these pictures - was the ferment slow enough that you had no problems with blowoff? Think you'll get a difference from limited head space?

 

[Roy2Ventullo]

Was wondering about these pictures - was the ferment slow enough that you had no problems with blowoff? Think you'll get a difference from limited head space?

I did not really have any blowoff with these 1/2 gallon bottles. The airlocks worked fine with no fouling. I did store the 200 ml starters in the frig night before (as to add just yeast slurries) and Bretts do not like the cold drop (I found out later), so maybe they just all went slow and built up over time. Not much experience with Bretts in small fermenters so cannot compare.

 

[brewguyver]

Are there any early favorites so far? I'm thinking about brewing up another batch and doing a blend of the 3-4 "best" strains. It might be a few weeks yet, as my 001 and a few others formed new pelecules while I was gone for thanksgiving.

I also noticed a few batches have cleared, so I'm planning on bottling them next week.

BTW - how are ya'll bottling these? I don't want to accidentally cross contaminate. I was considering doing a CO2 push through 3/8 copper that I can boil between uses or something similar.

 

[ocluke]

Are there any early favorites so far? I'm thinking about brewing up another batch and doing a blend of the 3-4 "best" strains. It might be a few weeks yet, as my 001 and a few others formed new pelecules while I was gone for thanksgiving.

I also noticed a few batches have cleared, so I'm planning on bottling them next week.

BTW - how are ya'll bottling these? I don't want to accidentally cross contaminate. I was considering doing a CO2 push through 3/8 copper that I can boil between uses or something similar.

I plan to bottle soon as well. While I almost always transfer in a CO2 environment, due to the fact that these are small volumes of beer and that brettanomyces is an excellent O2 scavenger, I may just pour straight into bottles to reduce the amount of times I would need to sanitize the same equipment.

Regarding your proposed transfer, you could boil your copper dip tube, but it's really not necessary to sterilize. Sanitizing with Starsan will do the trick. Brett is bound by the same natural laws as all other yeast, and its cell walls will be ruptured by the sanitizer in the same way that sacch will.

 

[ryanhope]

Glad to see people progressing on this. I won't be able to start my ferments until Feb

 

[milldoggy]

I have my starters sized, just need to brew the recipe. Hopefully this Xmas break.

 

[Coff]

Yea I need to get my batch brewed later this month.

 

[brewguyver]

I plan to bottle soon as well. While I almost always transfer in a CO2 environment, due to the fact that these are small volumes of beer and that brettanomyces is an excellent O2 scavenger, I may just pour straight into bottles to reduce the amount of times I would need to sanitize the same equipment.

Regarding your proposed transfer, you could boil your copper dip tube, but it's really not necessary to sterilize. Sanitizing with Starsan will do the trick. Brett is bound by the same natural laws as all other yeast, and its cell walls will be ruptured by the sanitizer in the same way that sacch will.

So a mini auto-siphon would be safe to use as well? I have no misconceptions about my pouring accuracy - I want to save as much beer as possible!

I'll probably wait until 1/5 to bottle. That'll give my 001 and 002 time to drop out (brand new pelecules formed last weekend) and will be ~ 60 days since pitching.

 

[sddanc]

was wondering if anyone has microscoped any of these strains yet? I tried taking pictures of my slides but software failure occurred.

 

[kerosin]

was wondering if anyone has microscoped any of these strains yet? I tried taking pictures of my slides but software failure occurred.

Happy New Year to everyone!

I did: http://eurekabrewing.wordpress.com/eby-strains/

Cheers, Sam

 

[Roy2Ventullo]

I have images of all twenty strains stained with a blue fungal stain. My students also ran PCR (polymerase chain reaction) to ID strains as Brett or Sacc. and two of the strains had double bands (might be two critters). I run a microbiology lab here and turns our students are really interested in the project . I will post images this weekend sometime (may do a link to a website for images).

Roy Ventullo

 

[kaz4121]

Can I still participate in this or is it no longer open?

I've just started diving into the all-brett beers and think this would be a great experiment opportunity.

 

[dantheman13]

Very cool project! Posting here and joining the Google group to stay informed. Thanks!

 

[statseeker]

Can I still participate in this or is it no longer open?

I've just started diving into the all-brett beers and think this would be a great experiment opportunity.

The experiment is closed. Sad since I started doing small batches and I'll be splitting some to do some brett experiments soon. Oh well.

Sent from my SCH-I535 using Home Brew mobile app

 

[Roy2Ventullo]

I have images of all twenty strains stained with a blue fungal stain. My students also ran PCR (polymerase chain reaction) to ID strains as Brett or Sacc. and two of the strains had double bands (might be two critters). I run a microbiology lab here and turns our students are really interested in the project . I will post images this weekend sometime (may do a link to a website for images).

Roy Ventullo

As promised, here are microscopic images of the 20 Bretts in a PDF document.

View attachment 20 BRETT IMAGES DOCUMENT.pdf

 

[berebrando]

Hey these are super cool thanks for posting Roy2Ventullo!

 

[kerosin]

Thanks Roy2Ventullo for posting. It is really interesting to see pseudohyphae formation for strains where I could not observe it. 2/20 strains may be more than one species? Not bad. Really looking forward to see the band patterns. Thanks to you and your students for all the work.

Cheers Sam

 

[ChugachBrewing]

Has anyone had any kind of "slime" or "sickness" to their batches at all? I noticed a high level of viscosity when pouring in some of my starters... and currently have this problem with another batch I used the yeasts for --> https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f127/slime-beer-sick-phase-448511/

Just wondering. Not trying to change the subject of the thread, but since I used the same yeast... I'll get a photo from my microscope in the next week or so.

 

[Brewbien]

Has anyone had any kind of "slime" or "sickness" to their batches at all? I noticed a high level of viscosity when pouring in some of my starters... and currently have this problem with another batch I used the yeasts for --> https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f127/slime-beer-sick-phase-448511/

Just wondering. Not trying to change the subject of the thread, but since I used the same yeast... I'll get a photo from my microscope in the next week or so.

I didn't notice any of that. I finally pitched all of mine last night and the only weirdness was that I got no activity from 001 and some mold on 038. I thought the slime/sickness was from pedio, didn't know brett produced that.

EDIT: Just read the the thread and realized you were generalizing and not talking specifically about this project, sorry.