Bottling with brett questions - Dark Winter Saison

[Wes440]

I brewed a Dark Winter Saison - closely following a recipe from Michael Tonsmeire's excellent book "American Sour Beers" to replicate a '10 Commandments' inspired ale.

Brewed on 2/15/15, this has been in secondary since 3/10/15, on 1 oz. oak cubes soaked in tawny port. The flavors in the beer are very complex and fascinating, as I used valencia orange peel, rosemary, and blackened about 1.5 lbs of flame raisins, and then deglazed them with some Cabernet, pureed them and added into the last 5 minutes of the boil. I made sure the raisin puree made it into the primary fermenter as well. Lots going on with the flavors. I fermented with ECY08 Saison Brasserie Blend, and it has been sitting around 1.011 for the last few weeks, so it's at around 9.7% abv.

I think this beer would be very nice if bottled as is, but I think the right strain of brettanomyces and a nice bottle conditioning would send this beer into competition territory.

I have a few brett ales bulk aging, and I have never bottled with brett.
I'm looking for good suggestions as to when to add, and what type/strain of brett would be best suited for this beer?

Also - should the beer bulk age with brett before bottling to take the 1.010 down further, or just add and bottle in thick glass? Also would love to hear some suggestions about priming sugar quantities related to specific gravity when bottling with brett. I would hate to screw this thing up in the bottle.

Any help is greatly appreciated!

I also happen to have ECY04 Brett anomala and ECY34 Dirty Dozen on hand.

 

[Oldsock]

I guess I'm qualified to chime in.

You'll get an extra .5 volumes of CO2 for every .001 drop in gravity in the bottle. At 1.010, that is a lot of potential carbonation that could be produced if you add Brett now.

I’d suggest aging the beer on Brett until the gravity stabilizes, then bottling with a standard amount of priming sugar. Something like Wyeast Brett lambicus could be very nice, it’ll add some cherry to mesh with the port, and some funk to bring it all together. I could see a Brett claussenii working too if you wanted a more leathery tone. I don't have enough experience to definitely suggest ECY04/ECY34, but I'd lean towards the anomala.

Glad to hear the clean recipe was good! Just bottled our sixth iteration of the dark/funky saison concept. This one had fresh cranberries and orange peel, and not nearly as strong.

 

[sweetcell]

should the beer bulk age with brett before bottling to take the 1.010 down further, or just add and bottle in thick glass?

given the high alcohol, the (relatively) high residual sugars, and the fact that you are unfamiliar with this specific recipe/process, i would bulk age with the brett before bottling. the brett might chew down just a little, or might chew down a lot. you have no idea where your carbonation might end up.

i've read a few reports of the ECY anomala doing some weird things flavor-wise. several folks have been unimpressed with it. i would favor the Dirty Dozen over it.

 

[Wes440]

I guess I'm qualified to chime in.

You'll get an extra .5 volumes of CO2 for every .001 drop in gravity in the bottle. At 1.010, that is a lot of potential carbonation that could be produced if you add Brett now.

I’d suggest aging the beer on Brett until the gravity stabilizes, then bottling with a standard amount of priming sugar. Something like Wyeast Brett lambicus could be very nice, it’ll add some cherry to mesh with the port, and some funk to bring it all together. I could see a Brett claussenii working too if you wanted a more leathery tone. I don't have enough experience to definitely suggest ECY04/ECY34, but I'd lean towards the anomala.

Glad to hear the clean recipe was good! Just bottled our sixth iteration of the dark/funky saison concept. This one had fresh cranberries and orange peel, and not nearly as strong.

Thank you for your input Oldsock, hugely helpful and enlightening on this one!

The clean recipe is a super solid dark saison with some nice 'holiday' spice notes to it, and I'll probably end up doing this again with a clean batch. I figure why not take this one just a bit further with a brett addition.

(I dosed the other batch with a mix of ECY20, Jolly Pumpkin, and CS dregs - only time will tell on that I suppose...)

I have read your reviews on some commercial brett blends, and the cherry pie with some subtle funk does sound like something that would really suit this beer. I may just take that route! I do have a couple of bottles of Orval dregs that I've been staring down for this, but I'm not sure what that would bring to the mix - it seems like a nice mild strain to me, of course I've only had it within an Orval....

It's nice to hear from you on this one, I'm constantly diving back into the book for reference - that reminds me, I need to review it on Amazon!

Below is a photo of what reading your book has led to:

Cheers!

 

[sweetcell]

Below is a photo of what reading your book has led to:

NICE!


i'm a bit hesitant about those orange rubber carboy caps. i have some and am not impressed with how well they seal. i occasionally use them for primary, but i wouldn't use them for long-term aging. YMMV...

 

[Wes440]

given the high alcohol, the (relatively) high residual sugars, and the fact that you are unfamiliar with this specific recipe/process, i would bulk age with the brett before bottling. the brett might chew down just a little, or might chew down a lot. you have no idea where your carbonation might end up.

i've read a few reports of the ECY anomala doing some weird things flavor-wise. several folks have been unimpressed with it. i would favor the Dirty Dozen over it.

I've read some weird things about ECY04 Anomala too, I'm wanting to do a 100% Brett beer with it, but I'm a little stumped on what to brew for it. I'll skip it for the dark winter saison and likely use the Wyeast B. Lambicus in that.

Thanks for the thought about the orange carboy caps, never really thought about that! Rubber stoppers would likely be more airtight.

 

[m00ps]

I've bottled a number of Brett beers and here's my advice:
Shoot for like maybe 75% of the priming sugar you would target

Use HEAVY bottles or Belgian cork ones. Most beer bottles are between 195 and 205 grams. I weigh all of my bottles (or at least used to before I started being able to identify which ones are sturdier). I only use bottles that are at least 220g for Brett beers. Stone, and Deschutes are two common breweries that use heavy bottles. Plus with Stone, you don;t need to get that pesky label off. Some, like Orval, are even heavier at over 300g!

But most of all, do NOT use any 22oz bombers. They seem to be much more susceptible to bottle bombs (lol) due to more surface area for the pressure inside to exert. I've had like 4 bombs so far (none of them Brett) and 3 of them were 22oz bottles. This was near the beginning of my brewing where I was stupidly rushing fermentation schedules

And like everyone said, make sure the gravity is stable. I've bottled my Brett beers anywhere from 3-6months of fermentation. I probably shouldve waited a bit longer for the 3 month one, but it tasted like I wanted it to and gravity hadn;t dropped a bit since the 4th week so I figured what the heck

 

[sweetcell]

I've bottled a number of Brett beers and here's my advice:
Shoot for like maybe 75% of the priming sugar you would target

IMO once gravity is truly stable, you can bottle with 100% of priming sugar. if you're not certain that the brett is done, or you expect to have bottles of this around in over a year and there is still some residual sugar left, then i would start thinking about cutting back the priming sugar.

Use HEAVY bottles or Belgian cork ones. (...) Some, like Orval, are even heavier at over 300g!

my favorite bottles are 330ml Duvel bottles. they even take regular 26mm crowns. haven't weighed one but they must be as heavy as orval bottles if not more.

But most of all, do NOT use any 22oz bombers. They seem to be much more susceptible to bottle bombs (lol) due to more surface area for the pressure inside to exert.

your standard north american bomber bottle is going to be no relatively stronger than a regular 6-pack bottle - i.e. not strong enough for high pressure. if you want to package in a larger format, use champagne bottles (typically require a 29mm cap) or 750ml bottles that weigh more than your standard bomber. Goose Island (Matilda and Sofie), Dogfish Head and a few other breweries use thick glass 22 oz/750ml bottles.

 

[sudbuddy]

I guess I'm qualified to chime in.

HAHAHA! This is one of the many reasons HBT is awesome. Also, that beer sounds amazing. I love what you did with the raisin puree, I'm gonna have to try that sometime

 

[Wes440]

Just bottled our sixth iteration of the dark/funky saison concept. This one had fresh cranberries and orange peel, and not nearly as strong.

This sounds great - I'll be looking for the tasting notes, I'm curious to see how it turns out! Pretty cool concept to be using dregs from a previous dark saison batch too - keep some of the 'genetic material' in the mix! I'm also curious to see how the cranberry comes through on it.

Link:
http://www.themadfermentationist.com/2014/02/funky-dark-saison-6-unknown.html

It's nice to be able to follow some of the recipes from the blog to the book - here's the recipe I followed, pretty close to the book if I remember correctly... A solid dark saison with a nice warming quality to it.

Link:
http://www.themadfermentationist.com/2008/10/dark-orange-rosemary-saison.html

 

[Oldsock]

This sounds great - I'll be looking for the tasting notes, I'm curious to see how it turns out! Pretty cool concept to be using dregs from a previous dark saison batch too - keep some of the 'genetic material' in the mix! I'm also curious to see how the cranberry comes through on it.

At bottling the cranberry was present, but subdued. Not too astringent and didn't smell like cranberry cocktail, we'll call it a win.

 

[Wes440]

At bottling the cranberry was present, but subdued. Not too astringent and didn't smell like cranberry cocktail, we'll call it a win.

Very nice! :rockin: