Favorite style to ferment with Brett

[Darth_Malt]

For some reason, living just outside of Grand Rapids, MI (aka Beer City USA apparently), i have had a hard time finding a beer fermented with Brett bacteria. That all changed last night when i found bottles of New Holland's Mischievous at a party store.
After drinking 24oz of 100% Brett fermented goodness, I'm definitely a fan of this particular branch of funk.
But now my beer brain is running on overdrive! I want to come up with something to brew and infect with some of this wonderfully funky bacteria. The only problem is, which of the many styles that would work with Brett should i try first??
So this is the question i throw out to the HBT family. What is your favorite style to infect with Brett? And which strain do you use for it?

 

[WBCo]

Brett isn't bacteria, it is a yeast.

I have yet to use Brett in any of my beers, but plan to do a secondary ferm with Brett on some of my house hefeweizen soon. I'd also like to do an IPA with all Brett. WLP644 is the closest I've gotten so far.

 

[secondbase]

There is a brett strain for every style! Remember that you will need to make a very large starter as the brett pitches from labs are meant for secondary and generally have a very small cell count. I would start small, maybe do a pale ale with some fruity hops and a fruity strain of brett.

 

[JKaranka]

Next beer I'm making is an old / stale ale so I'll pitch Brett C after sacc. Is done.

 

[Calder]

This is one that I like to do. Lets the Brett flavors come to the front.

Simple Farmhouse:

7.5 lbs 2-Row
0.5 lbs Acid Malt
0.5 lbs Aromatic Malt
0.5 lbs Oats
Mash 150 F (mash efficiency of 75% assumed)

0.75 lbs sugar

60 minute hops to get to about 30 IBUs
0.5 ozs Willamette (or similar) @ 10
0.5 ozs Willamette (or similar) @ 20

Ferment starting around 80 F, and raise to over 85 F over space of a week.

OG: 1.055
FG: 1.005 - 1.010

 

[Calder]

Next beer I'm making is an old / stale ale so I'll pitch Brett C after sacc. Is done.

I've never seen a British Brett beer. Can you get them?

 

[m00ps]

I've never seen a British Brett beer. Can you get them?

Not really. They are the original Brett beers though. Brett evolved to live on wood sugars inside barrels and would regularly contaminate british casks. Brettanomyces literally means "British Fungus"

 

[m00ps]

For some reason, living just outside of Grand Rapids, MI (aka Beer City USA apparently), i have had a hard time finding a beer fermented with Brett bacteria. That all changed last night when i found bottles of New Holland's Mischievous at a party store.
After drinking 24oz of 100% Brett fermented goodness, I'm definitely a fan of this particular branch of funk.

IMO, Mischievous was a complete let down. Almost zero fruity brett character compared to even my worst all-brett beer. I think they needed a larger variety of brett strains because this one just tasted exceedingly boring

 

[JKaranka]

I've never seen a British Brett beer. Can you get them?

You can get some like Strong Suffolk by GK that has always been blended with a Brett old ale. White Shield used to have Brett for at least a hundred years (and an attenuation of 95%) but I bet that now that they are owned by Coors they must have dropped it. Yeah, British IPAs had ridiculous attenuations till quite recently

 

[Calder]

Not really. They are the original Brett beers though. Brett evolved to live on wood sugars inside barrels and would regularly contaminate british casks. Brettanomyces literally means "British Fungus"

I know the origin. I have just never found a British Beer that was brewed with Brett. And I've drunk my share of British beer.

White Shield used to have Brett for at least a hundred years (and an attenuation of 95%) but I bet that now that they are owned by Coors they must have dropped it. Yeah, British IPAs had ridiculous attenuations till quite recently

Maybe I brewed with Brett without even knowing about it. Many years ago, back in the UK, before we had the range of strains we have today, I used to use the yeast from a couple of bottles of White Shield for home brew. It was about the only beer you could get that had live yeast in it.

I didn't think it was Brett, but I didn't know much about yeast in those days, or that there was such a thing as Brett.

The beer I made back then was probably awful, but seemed OK; probably because it was cheap. You couldn't get cheap Supermarket beer in those days - Supermarket prices were pretty much the same as Pub prices.