erikpete18
Well-Known Member
So I'm looking for a little advice. While I was getting my stuff together last August for partial mashing, I figured I'd do one more extract kit. Looked around and Northern Brewers No. 1 caught my eye. Its a barleywine/old ale, OG ~1.1, ~65 IBUs. The recipe was fairly simple - 12lb of pale extract and 3lb of sugar - with the Wyeast 9097 special blend yeast (attenuative Sac. and Brett strain).
So I brewed it up, pitched a decanted 3L starter (only grew a few days, don't figure the Brett grew much), and let it sit. After 3 months I checked and it was getting a nice sized pellicle so I figured the Brett was taking hold. Well, a month ago (6 months in) I started to worry about it sitting on the yeast cake that long and was going to rack to a keg to keep aging. Checked the gravity and it was only down to 1.040 (about 60% attenuation). So, rather than rack to a keg I moved it to a 5 gal carboy, stirred up some of the yeast cake while racking, and planned on growing up a starter of some new Brett and pitching that to help bring the gravity down some more.
Fast forward to yesterday, Brett L (Whitelabs) starter has been growing for three days and figured I'd check on the beer. Now I'm starting to get another pellicle, real thin but a few bubbles on top.
So I'm going to the experts to figure out the best way to proceed. Should I leave the beer alone and hope the Brett can chew anther 5-10 points off, or should I go ahead and pitch the starter to help it along? I'm sure there's no damage to pitching the starter, but I could always use it for an all-Brett beer if people think the Brett already fermenting can get the work done
So I brewed it up, pitched a decanted 3L starter (only grew a few days, don't figure the Brett grew much), and let it sit. After 3 months I checked and it was getting a nice sized pellicle so I figured the Brett was taking hold. Well, a month ago (6 months in) I started to worry about it sitting on the yeast cake that long and was going to rack to a keg to keep aging. Checked the gravity and it was only down to 1.040 (about 60% attenuation). So, rather than rack to a keg I moved it to a 5 gal carboy, stirred up some of the yeast cake while racking, and planned on growing up a starter of some new Brett and pitching that to help bring the gravity down some more.
Fast forward to yesterday, Brett L (Whitelabs) starter has been growing for three days and figured I'd check on the beer. Now I'm starting to get another pellicle, real thin but a few bubbles on top.
So I'm going to the experts to figure out the best way to proceed. Should I leave the beer alone and hope the Brett can chew anther 5-10 points off, or should I go ahead and pitch the starter to help it along? I'm sure there's no damage to pitching the starter, but I could always use it for an all-Brett beer if people think the Brett already fermenting can get the work done