Hefeweizen with brett

[DaveSeattle]

I accidentally made a beer that is really good, that I've never heard of, so I figured I'd share: my German hefeweizen, fermented out with weizen yeast, got infected in one of my minikegs with some kind of Brett. It has a definite barnyard funk to it. And it is amazing. The barnyard goes great with the firm wheat mouthfeel and taste, and the banana from the weizen yeast balances the slight harshness of the Brett.

Just thought I'd share.

 

[SanPancho]

I've got one going now, started as a "tropical" wheat with citra, melon, Hal bland and mandarina. Have since realized this was not correct grain bill, so after cold craving I racked it off hefe yeast and I just split it in half, a pseudo gose with salt and lime zest and the other half just got some wlp650.

Any idea what strain of Brett it could have picked up? Id assume you had some Brett in keg from prior batch. Or you think this was spontaneous ?

 

[DaveSeattle]

It was spontaneous. I've found these minikegs are a cesspool of random gunk and am currently looking for a replacement (I use them to fit some extra beers into my keezer beyond the space I have for cornies). I do have some brett in my brewery, but only in the Roselare blend with a bunch of bugs, and it was very segregated from this keg so I don't think it's cross-contamination.

 

[SanPancho]

Interesting. Well in any case, it makes me think I was onto a good idea if you're loving the results.

For small leftover amounts not worth putting in a corny I use soda bottles with carbonator caps. I get them fro ritebrew.com, they're only $10 instead of 15. Buy generic seltzer water at grocery store for when I need sterile water and then reuse the soda bottles to hold the extra beer. Cheap. Reusable. Recycleable.

 

[DaveSeattle]

Thanks, yeah, I have one of those. The way I'm using these minikegs is they sit on top of my corny kegs in my keezer so I can have a couple extra beers on tap. I didn't realize how often they'd get infected until I started using them repeatedly. So I need something that holds a reasonable amount of beer and for which I can rig some kind of tap system. Looking at the BeerBox now but it's pretty pricy. I would just forget about having the extra beers but then I'd have two empty taps on my keezer.

 

[SanPancho]

You can get 2.5 or 3 gal used cornys from adventures in homebrewing. A lot of times they'll be on sale for about 35 or so if I recall. Works well for split batch experiments, cider, etc.

 

[DaveSeattle]

Wow, I've never seen them anywhere close to that cheap. That is worth looking into. Thanks!

 

[BugHunter]

Hefeweizen and Brett are a natural pairing, and Brett is able to consume and convert some of the naturally occurring products made by Hefe yeast the same way it can consume the exopolysacharides produced by Pedio.

 

[DaveSeattle]

Hefeweizen and Brett are a natural pairing, and Brett is able to consume and convert some of the naturally occurring products made by Hefe yeast the same way it can consume the exopolysacharides produced by Pedio.

I had no idea! Cool!

 

[geolover]

One of my favorite commercial beers last year was "Thank You" by Anchorage Brewing Co. It was a bavarian hefe with brett.