Repitching Brett

[Sadu]

Hey everyone, I just ordered myself some WLP670 American Farmhouse blend which is a mix of Sacc and Brett for making funky saisons.

This will be my first go at a sour (aside from kettle sours) and I have a few questions.

I brew 1.5 gallons and normally do a plastic primary, glass secondary and then either mini-keg or bottle from there. I was thinking a simple pilsner/wheat 1.050 saison to start with, maybe a fruit addition, since my regular saisons have come out very nicely.

Questions:

1. How do starters and harvesting yeast work with sour blends? I can't afford to buy a whole liquid vial per 1.5 gallons so I was hoping to be able to either harvest the cake from primary or overbuild the starter and keep it in the fridge for next time. This approach works wonderfully for normal yeast, but what about brett or brett blends?

2. In terms of getting bugs on my gear, how careful does one need to be with brett? I can dedicate a plastic primary if need be, I have glass for secondary, and I can dedicate some silicone racking hoses. What I can't dedicate is the mini-keg / taps / bottling gun / beer lines. Am I better to forget about kegging and bottle condition instead?

3. How do you know know when to bottle? How does one avoid bottle bombs?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Elduder]

You can harvest from the yeast cake, but the results will be unpredictable. The growth rates of the microbes in the blend are different, and what you harvest will have a different ratio than what you pitched. This is not necessarily a bad thing, and people repitch sour yeast cakes all the time. Most people find that the second pitch sours faster and drops the pH lower, so upping the hoping rate on your second pitch might be necessary. For pure Brett/Brett blends, you can harvest the cake and pitch it again with little concern. If it is a blend, one strain might outcompete the other.

It is recommended to have a separate set of plastic gear for anything that touches sour beer. Racking equipment, fermentor, bung, airlock, bottling bucket, bottling wand.... think about your process and which items will be exposed to LAB and Brett. I would recommend bottle conditioning with dedicated gear, as I wouldn't want to infect my beer gun or tap. I personally pass my clean equipment to my sour projects after about 6-12 months of use.

100% Brett beer can be bottled after about a month if the gravity is stable. Mixed ferments can take anywhere from 6 months to years. A good rule of thumb is a stable gravity, under 1.010, over a period of 2-3 months. I still bottle in Belgian or champagne bottles for an added security measure, and I like to highly carbonate my sour/funky stuff anyway.


If you want to take a walk on the wild side, I highly recommend checking out the book American Sour Beers by Michael Tonsmeire. You can also check out his website madfermentationist.com for tons of recipes, tips, etc.


Edit: I forgot you were talking about a sacc/Brett blend, specifically. You should be able to repitch the cake, but the Brett population will grow larger each time. Again, unpredictable results will follow. If your cake goes south, you can always pitch the dregs from a few bottles plus some fresh sacc in primary. The bottle dregs will give you the Brett.

 

[radwizard]

There should be no shortage of bugs to reuse. You'll have your own dregs to work with (bottles or Keg), the yeast cake, and all the beer you have fermenting or maturing can be reintroduced.