Hops/Glycocides/Yeast with Beta-Glucosidase

Yup, brettanomyces is just another yeast. With a tremendous amount of variability between species, let alone strains. But star-san kills it. :cheers:

So you treat it like any other yeast as far as cleaning and sanitizing? No worries about isolating equipment?

I have a saison w/brett ready to keg, but it’s my first time using it.

You’ll find widely varying opinions on this, but it is a yeast, and will be killed by any other treatment that kills yeast. I share everything between sacch and brett without any carryover. However, I do take the time to do a long oxy soak in my buckets. We use star-san to kill wild bacteria and yeast. And brettanomyces is… Wild yeast. Star-San will kill it.

The one thing to keep in mind, brett can form a biofilm which is next to impossible to remove. If your tolerance to risk is low, keep equipment separated. Otherwise, give it a good cleaning and you won’t have an issue.

Now throw bacteria into the mix, and it’s best to keep plastics separated. That’s a whole 'nother issue though.

Thanks porkchop, I was mainly concerned with dedicating a keg for “wild” yeasts.

I do have a strict cleaning and sanitizing regiment, so it should be good.

Side note, kegged it today, went from 1.044 to 0.998, tasted great. Saved some yeast for future brews.

Love those low-gravity beers that end up 6%+ ABV! Mine from this past weekend came in at 1.061, which should come in at least 8%. Gotta be careful with these…

I know you kegged it, but there’s something incredible that happens when you bottle a brett saison at 3.5 and higher volumes in heavy glass bottles. I don’t know if it’s the pressure in the bottle or aromatics released by the higher carbonation, but this is one style that really benefits from the bottle. Maybe package a few in glass with some extra priming sugar?

That’s interesting, I was debating whether to bottle or keg. It’s been a while since I’ve bottled.

I do have some champagne bottles but I loaned my brother-in-law my bench capper. He’s about 5 hrs north.

I have a strong ale that’s been sitting on Roselare for over a year, that one will be bottled.

@porkchop @pietro. Any update on this? Working on a recipe now for hopefully Sunday. Bumped my crystal malt to 8.5% (combo of carawheat and C40) to help with the finished body.

Checked mine last weekend, 1.051 to 1.004 in 12 days with ECY dirty dozen. Racked it to secondary, and I expect it to drop a little more over the next couple of weeks, maybe down to 1.000. I’m going to dry hop it for a good 14 days weekend after next, and hopefully bottle over the holidays.

The aroma from primary was incredible - complete tropical fruit bomb!

Could I suggest some flaked oats or rye? They really work wonders in a beer that finishes low like it probably will with 644.

Not sure if I have any flaked oats laying around. Guess I’ll have to pick up some quick oats tomorrow.

Trust me, if you add flakes oats to your beer, you can justify having it for breakfast.

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You have a suggestion for % of oats to use?

I use half a pound in around a 1.050 wort. Hoping to get some feedback from @pietro too.

Thanks, thinking add the oats and maybe drop the addition of C40. Maybe something like this for 5gal:
6 lbs 2 row
1 lb white wheat
8 oz carawheat
8 oz oats

I don’t want the C40 to add enough sweetness that it over shadows my hops and yeast character… I will be using centennial and zythos.

The recipe above looks real solid. I agree with the omission of the c40. Doesn’t really have a good purpose in a beer like this. I may experiment with a similar recipe soon.

I agree, that looks great! Never used zythos- what kind of hop schedule do you think you’ll use?

Did the recipe above Friday. Used centennial and zythos. Hop schedule was .1oz of each as FWH, .5 oz each at 5 mins, .5 oz each at 2 mins, .5 oz each for a 30 min whirlpool. Will DH with 1 oz each. As you can see most of the IBUS come from the late additions and the whirlpool hops.

I never used zythos before but I had a pound laying around and I think zythos descriptor would work well as long as I get the yeast to perform like I want it. It’s bubbling away right now at 68° ambient (72° actual).

Let me ask you guys… Is this yeast slow to start? Made a starter that didn’t seem to want to take off.

Also got a SMASH IPA in with 2 row and centennial. It was a long day. :sunglasses:

how much yeast did you pitch?

I pitched a 1 month old vial into a 1L starter using this method:

[shaken not stirred starter link][1]

The starter took awhile to kick off. I pitched at high krausen and the lag time was virtually non-existent. Oddly enough it fermented like mad and really was much slower this morning. In addition to very little bubbling out of the air lock the ferm temp has dropped as well indicating that it is already entering the clean up phase. Different from what I have read.

I think part of the problem is that White Labs packages these with the same (pathetically low) cell counts that they use with their brettanomyces vials. Some of the comments about it being slow to ferment are probably people pitching it in primary without a starter. You probably handled it right by pitching at high krausen, and the little beasties started kicking butt and taking names right out of the gate. I wouldn’t be surprised if it takes awhile to drop those last few points, though - it seems to stay in suspension forever!