Bottle Bretting

[Blue-Frog]

Hello.

I am not sure I am in the right place for this question, so lead me if necessary.
I am looking to hear from people who have experience and opinions on
adding Brett to beer during bottle conditioning...

What was your experience?
What is the min. time (and at what temperature) that is needed to show results?

(eg. Brett c. /Berliner Weisse)

Thanks,
Ray

 

[chrilr]

Room temp and a minimum of 1 month but it is better in 2

 

[TEWNCfarms]

So is this a sour beer that’s soured in the bottle completely?

 

[sweetcell]

is the beer currently "clean", i.e. no brett or bugs? if yes, what is its current FG?

the issue with adding brett to a clean at bottling is that you can't be certain where it's going to finish. a drop of 2 gravity points = 1 vol CO2, so you typically don't want a drop of more than 4 points... but you have no guarantees that brett will only drop it 4. what if the brett chews up 8 points? if you use regular beer bottles, you could have bombs on your hands. if you have thick glass bottles, those can handle 4 or 5 vols of CO2 (but open those bottles carefully!).

if the beer is a sour or already has brett in it, and its gravity is stable, then adding (more) brett at bottling shouldn't be an issue.

 

[Blue-Frog]

So is this a sour beer that’s soured in the bottle completely?

No, it is a dual fermentation yeast+LAB

 

[sweetcell]

Hello.

I am not sure I am in the right place for this question, so lead me if necessary.
I am looking to hear from people who have experience and opinions on
adding Brett to beer during bottle conditioning...

What was your experience?
What is the min. time (and at what temperature) that is needed to show results?

(eg. Brett c. /Berliner Weisse)

in general, i find that 6 months are required for brett to start shining. i get some character starting to show at 2 or 3 months, but it's very subtle.

so if i understand correctly, you brewed a berliner with sacch and lacto in primary, and you're looking to add brett at bottling. personally, i would bulk age the beer with the brett in a carboy for 6 months before bottling. you should have little concern about over- or under-carb'ing your beer by then.

what is the current gravity?

 

[Blue-Frog]

Sorry, I did not see your last post before posting this.
I will look at it and post a follow up below.

is the beer currently "clean", i.e. no brett or bugs? if yes, what is its current FG?

the issue with adding brett to a clean at bottling is that you can't be certain where it's going to finish. a drop of 2 gravity points = 1 vol CO2, so you typically don't want a drop of more than 4 points... but you have no guarantees that brett will only drop it 4. what if the brett chews up 8 points? if you use regular beer bottles, you could have bombs on your hands. if you have thick glass bottles, those can handle 4 or 5 vols of CO2 (but open those bottles carefully!).

if the beer is a sour or already has brett in it, and its gravity is stable, then adding (more) brett at bottling shouldn't be an issue.

I must be missing something; First, if you do not add the brett untill the SG reaches a safe level, wouldn't that solve the problem? Using the above example, if you waited until the SG was 1.004, bottle bombs would not be an issue. Is the real issue that people can't wait til the SG drops to that level? Is it common that the normal fermentation stops well above 1.004?

Second, how would the fact that it is a sour beer, change any of this?
If it is a sour beer, does one therefore know where it will finish?

(Your comments are helping me to see the issue better, but I must still be missing something.)

 

[Blue-Frog]

in general, i find that 6 months are required for brett to start shining. i get some character starting to show at 2 or 3 months, but it's very subtle.

so if i understand correctly, you brewed a berliner with sacch and lacto in primary, and you're looking to add brett at bottling. personally, i would bulk age the beer with the brett in a carboy for 6 months before bottling. you should have little concern about over- or under-carb'ing your beer by then.

what is the current gravity?

Correct. Actually I wanted to see if there was any difference between bottle bretting and bulk bretting; thus I did in fact do both. Looking back at my orginal question, I guess the reason I was asking in the first place, was to get a handle on when the best time to compare them would be. You said you would bulk age with brett for 6 months.
Is there is a flavor impact based upon the storage container volume?

(Current gravity ~1.006)

 

[sweetcell]

First, if you do not add the brett untill the SG reaches a safe level, wouldn't that solve the problem? Using the above example, if you waited until the SG was 1.004, bottle bombs would not be an issue. Is the real issue that people can't wait til the SG drops to that level? Is it common that the normal fermentation stops well above 1.004?

brett can ferment sugars that sacch can't. so, the beer might be at "sacch FG" but not "brett FG". in the case of your beer, 1.006 is as low as sacch can take it, but brett might take it lower. if you added added enough priming sugar to carb the beer to 2.5 vols, and in addition the brett chewed it down to 1.000, that's an extra 3 vols right there - so you're at 5.5 vols, which most "regular" bottle can't handle (i.e. they'll burst).

on the other hand, brett might not chew it down that much. so one could think "the brett will provide carbonation, so i wont' add any priming sugar", the brett only chews off 2 points, and you end up with under-carbonated beer.

the moral is: unless you are very familiar with a specific strain of brett (like Orval is with its strain), you can't be certain what the brett will do. so making any assumptions about its behavior is risky.

Second, how would the fact that it is a sour beer, change any of this?
If it is a sour beer, does one therefore know where it will finish?

actually, if you read my original post, i didn't ask about whether it's sour or not - i asked about the presence of brett and other highly-attenuating bugs (lacto doesn't attenuate very much). as outlined above, this distinction is important because if the beer is already bugged, then adding another highly attenuating organism like brett won't change much in terms of gravity (since the bugs would have already attenuated the beer to a very low point, limiting what brett has left to ferment). in your case, sacch + lacto = still sugars left for brett to ferment.

 

[sweetcell]

Actually I wanted to see if there was any difference between bottle bretting and bulk bretting; thus I did in fact do both.

that's an awesome experiment, thanks for doing that. i've wanted to do this for a while now but never got around to it. please report back, i look forward to seeing if you perceive a difference.

Looking back at my orginal question, I guess the reason I was asking in the first place, was to get a handle on when the best time to compare them would be. You said you would bulk age with brett for 6 months.

i then promptly derailed the conversation by going down a rabbit-hole of brett vs. sacch attenuation. sorry about that. yeah, i'd give it 6 months at least.

Is there is a flavor impact based upon the storage container volume?

there is some debate around that. the conventional wisdom is that brett behaves differently under pressure, so there should be a difference between bottles (pressured) and carboy (un-pressured). however, a few folks assert that there is no difference, most notably chad yacobson of crooked stave and PhD-in-brett fame. that's why i'm so curious about this.

 

[RPh_Guy]

Recently I added Brett at bottling to a mixed fermentation. The base beer had Wyeast B. lambicus, Lacto, and Sacc Trois.

4 mini batches of 3 bottles each got additional Brett cultures.
I'm planning to taste at 2, 4, & 6 months.
Should be fun!

 

[Blue-Frog]

Sweetcell, I thought in post 4 you said something about sour, and that got me on the wrong track perhaps, but you getting derailed is a good thing as it allows me to revisit old sticking points and review a little.

I will look at my notes and figure out when tasting day should be. Then we can all meet back up and see what's what.

 

[chrilr]

I have noticed that bottle size matters in flavor maturation of beers dosed with Brett at bottling. 12oz bottles show flavor impact quicker than 22's or 750's.
In my experience, Brett dosed into a fermented beer will show character quicker under pressure as opposed to under an airlock. For a 2 years I would take a gallon of ipa and put in in a jug with Brett. They would drop in gravity but never really showed much Brett character till they were bottled for a few months.

 

[sweetcell]

For a 2 years I would take a gallon of ipa and put in in a jug with Brett. They would drop in gravity but never really showed much Brett character till they were bottled for a few months.

did you carbonate and chill the beer in the jug before tasting it? i'm wondering if comparing the taste of warm flat beer to chilled carbonated beer is apples and oranges...

 

[chrilr]

did you carbonate and chill the beer in the jug before tasting it? i'm wondering if comparing the taste of warm flat beer to chilled carbonated beer is apples and oranges...

Warm, flat beer does taste different than chilled and carbonated beer in my house.
Thru experience you can have an idea of where it's going to go once carbonated.

My problem with trying to copy procedures of commercial brewers is we are no where near their scale of size and that can make a difference. (Big or little) The beer in my 59 gallon wine barrel is not gonna come out the same as my 5

I wonder if the beer doesn't lose some aromatics thru the airlock vs being trapped inside a capped or corked bottle.

 

[RPh_Guy]

At 2 months I notice small but tangible differences between the different Brett cultures I added at bottling.

BTW this batch I hit with glucoamylase (in the fermenter), so there is no sugar for Brett to eat.