i am extreme noob
- Thread starter Grod1
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i wouldn't, for two reasons.
first, you likely have too much residual sugars in those beers. brett can ferment sugars that regular brewers yeast (saccharomyces) can't. so if you add a little brett to each bottle and recap, they will become over-carbonated and might explode. you couldn't cap them, you would need some way of letting the pressure out. there are ways of doing that (putting an air lock on each bottle, using a balloon with a hole it in, etc.) but that's a pain.
second, brett won't cure a bad beer. you get what you put in. by drying out the beer, the brett might make whatever the problem with the beer is even worse.
your best bet is to drink that beer as-is or dump it, then brew a new batch with the intention of adding brett. that way you can be sure you have a decent beer to start with before committing the time to aging it with brett. you can also formulate a recipe specifically for a brett beer.
first, you likely have too much residual sugars in those beers. brett can ferment sugars that regular brewers yeast (saccharomyces) can't. so if you add a little brett to each bottle and recap, they will become over-carbonated and might explode. you couldn't cap them, you would need some way of letting the pressure out. there are ways of doing that (putting an air lock on each bottle, using a balloon with a hole it in, etc.) but that's a pain.
second, brett won't cure a bad beer. you get what you put in. by drying out the beer, the brett might make whatever the problem with the beer is even worse.
your best bet is to drink that beer as-is or dump it, then brew a new batch with the intention of adding brett. that way you can be sure you have a decent beer to start with before committing the time to aging it with brett. you can also formulate a recipe specifically for a brett beer.
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Grod1
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thank you,Both things you said make absolute seance.However, i was thinking about just dumping it all back into a glass carboy(with airlock) and adding more malt for the brett.Also there is nothing wrong with the beer other then its not great.Its to hoppy and and not malty enough, other then that no off flavors i would worry about escalating. I hear you tho, just start fresh.
feinbera
Well-Known Member
Nothing but time (or dilution) will fix over-hopped beer; brett will just eat whatever sweetness and body there is in the beer, which will tend to make the perceived bitterness even more bitter.
I guess the first thing I'd do is open one up, see if it's still over-bitter – "a few months" ought to be enough time for the hops to have significantly mellowed. You'll get next to no flavor or aroma at all (those age out quicker than raw bitterness), but you might have ended up not too far from a British ale of some sort, with malt driving the flavor and only enough bitter left to balance the beer.
Now, if you still don't like it, and you've got a carboy you don't mind tying up for a year or so, you can decant to a carboy (refrigerate the beers first! I learned this the hard way...), pitch some dregs from a favorite brett/sour beer, and see what happens. But you'll still have to wait long enough for the bitterness to age out, which will also happen if you just leave 'em in the bottles.
I guess the first thing I'd do is open one up, see if it's still over-bitter – "a few months" ought to be enough time for the hops to have significantly mellowed. You'll get next to no flavor or aroma at all (those age out quicker than raw bitterness), but you might have ended up not too far from a British ale of some sort, with malt driving the flavor and only enough bitter left to balance the beer.
Now, if you still don't like it, and you've got a carboy you don't mind tying up for a year or so, you can decant to a carboy (refrigerate the beers first! I learned this the hard way...), pitch some dregs from a favorite brett/sour beer, and see what happens. But you'll still have to wait long enough for the bitterness to age out, which will also happen if you just leave 'em in the bottles.
Excessive hoppiness fades with time. As a new brewer, let this batch be your lesson in the half-life of hops in beer - crack one open once a week or so until it reaches a level of hoppiness you can handle. Taking carbed beer and tossing it into a carboy for refermentation is way more likely to ruin the beer than letting it mellow in the bottles. Save that kind of experimentation until you've got the basics down better.
