Homebrew SOS

[seym]

Hey Brewers, expert advice needed! I am into my third brew, doing extract plus steeped grain. While I am a novice brewer, I have developed a taste for wild and funky beers over the last couple of years. So I went a little nuts on my last brew as a result, now I am not sure what to do with it. I wanted to brew a saison along the lines of this:
http://beersmithrecipes.com/viewrecipe/142459/saison-extract

However, when I got to my LHBS, they were lacking much of the ingredients, including the Saison yeast. So I kinda just went with it brewing the following americanized saison-esque ale:

6 lb Dry Malt Extract - Light
1 lb Corn Sugar - Dextrose

Steeping Grains
1 lb German - Wheat Malt 37 2 11.8%
0.5 lb German - CaraMunich I 34 39 5.9%

Hops
1.5 oz Mount Hood
2 oz Willamette

Yeast
Fermentis / Safale - American Ale Yeast US-05

Which in an of itself is not that much of a problem. But I also got excited and pitched in some bottle dregs in an attempt to get some sourness happening. I used the dregs from

http://www.wildbeerco.com/beers/ninkasi/

Which apparently has champagne yeast, in addition to Brett...

I pitched all the yeast and dregs together in the primary. Now I am not sure what to do. I know Brett fermentations take a long time to ferment, so do I treat it like that, or just check until the FG stabilizes and bottle as normal.

I was thinking of doing the secondary on some fruit (rhubarb).

Any ideas much appreciated!

 

[frazier]

Hey, we've all been there, including me, using the "kitchen sink" approach to brewing. I still have to resist the urge, sometimes, to say "what if I toss this in..." halfway through the boil. But I prefer a planned approach, and I'm leery of substitutions unless they are close. Which, S-05, Saison yeast, and champagne yeast are not.

That said - what you will get is hard to predict. You may or may not get active Brett going. You will have to wait until the S-05 subsides to see if a pellicle forms. More likely, the dregs you tossed in are from the champagne yeast they use at bottling time. It's not really a good idea for primary fermentation, but the S-05 will probably crowd it out.

My best guess is, they pasteurized the beer prior to bottling because most folks won't want to pour a mini-pellicle into their glass. So, no Brett. The champagne yeast won't really get started, so you'll end up with the Americanized saison you started with. Which is not a bad outcome. It is beer, after all.

If your LHBS doesn't carry what you need, with a little advance planning you can order in the yeast you need.

Cheers,

 

[ricshayne]

So you won't get a saison. The main flavors and aromas in a saison are from the yeast. The yeast you used is a very neutral clean yeast. the bottle dregs are most likely the champaign yeast and not the brett. but let it ride out for 2-3 months, give it a taste and see. worst case scenario, barring an infection, is that you will have beer.

 

[feinbera]

One thing you could do is ferment on the warm side. My first beer, before I knew that temperature control was a thing, was a US-05 pale ale that free-floated its way on up into the low to mid 70's during primary fermentation, which caused this normally-clean yeast to produce esters which, if not quite funky, were at least "belgiany."

As for the Brett – it's slow-working, and it will only form a pellicle in the presence of oxygen, which could very well mean they only added champagne yeast to hurry the bottle carbing along and get those beers out the door, and do CO2-flushing on their bottling line (which they really oughtta be anyway if they're producing large-format beers for aging).

I'd let it ride in primary for a month, take a peek, see if you see a pellicle – if so, rack to glass and put it somewhere you'll forget about it for a few months, if not, bottle.

Quick edit to add, if you want to be sure you funk it up, pick up one of these beers known to have live brett and/or bacteria, step up the dregs a couple of times with 1.020 unhopped DME wort to wake up the bugs and get the cell counts up, and add 'em when they're ready. The brett and bugs work slowly on the stuff the brewer's yeast leaves behind, so, it's not a fatal setback to pitch them after primary fermentation is done (in fact, many commercial sour/funky beers are made this way).

 

[Calder]

I didn't see anything about Brett in the link.

I suspect all that is live is the champagne yeast.

 

[jtratcliff]

Also, if you do rhubarb, then that'll be the dominant flavor...

See my rhubarb rye recipe for some rhubarb discussion:
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=412780

I found 3 lbs, frozen then thawed, to be a good amount to use.

 

[seym]

So I decided to toss in the rhubarb after racking to secondary last night. Gonna assume the Brett was a no go, and just bottle as normal. The beer I got the dregs from (wild beer) does say wild yeast AND champagne yeast, but I cant find any more info than that, so I guess that could mean a variety of things.

My next question though, is do I leave it in the secondary for a long time? The gravity is stable, but I have never used adjuncts before so not sure.

The options for leaving it in the secondary, due to an upcoming vacation are either 1) 6 days then bottle, or 2) 24 days then bottle or longer..?

thanks all!

 

[slym2none]

Take the deuce.