First Lager Brett Brew - pitch rate?

[Roadie]

Hey everyone. I'm going to brew 5.5 gallons of my German Pilsner but change the hops up from the usual Hallertauer to Manderina Bavaria. I plan on fermenting with lager yeast (WLP835). Usually final gravity for this beer is around 1.012. At that point I plan on racking, raising temp to 75 and then pitching Yeast Bay's Amalgamation and letting it go for 6 months or so and see what I get. I've never brewed a sour/brett beer and I am unsure of the Brett pitching rate. I have 2 vials of Amalgamation but they only have 2-3B cells per vial. Most of the heavy lifting will have been done by the 835 but I'm unsure how large of a starter to make. I'd prefer not to wait a year to get the Brett character so sooner is better and am unsure if underpitching will increase the Brett character or not. Any ideas on how large of a starter to make? I also want to overbuild the starter a little and share with guys in my club plus keep some for future use. My initial thought was to put both vials into a 1 liter starter and then possibly do another step after decanting as I use a stir plate and I'm told the starter beer will be highly acidic so decanting is a must. Any thoughts??

 

[mashpaddled]

You don't need more than one vial for the five gallon batch. Save the other one for another batch or to share with others in your club. Brett is notorious for being slow and lazy in starters so if you want to make a starter be prepared to work on it for a week (or more) rather than a couple days.

Brett won't work faster to create the flavors you want by overpitching it. You might get brett to dry the beer out faster but you won't create the flavors faster. Plan to wait 4-6 months (at least) to create good flavor.

 

[RPh_Guy]

A starter is not necessary for secondary pitching.

I would pitch one vial and use the second to make a small starter (takes a week or more) to share the culture. Not on a stirplate.

Answers to all your questions here:
http://www.milkthefunk.com/wiki/Brettanomyces

Cheers

 

[couchsending]

Some Brett strains will create their flavor profiles much much faster. I was listening to an old podcast with one of the Brewers from Goose and he was saying that after adding Brett in secondary they only waited 14 days before packaging.

I’ve been thinking about a Brett pilsner a bit lately. I’ve only had two, one from Garage Project and one from AZ Wilderness. I believe both were bottle conditioned with Brett. Not sure how the Allagash version is made.

Personally I’d think about trying to make as dry a beer as possible (long rest at 145 then 154/162) and bottle condition with Brett. You can get 34/70 or the liquid equivalent down to 1.006 pretty easily. Add a little less priming sugar and bottle condition in heavy glass assuming the Brett will chew through a couple more points. Most beers I secondary with just Brett rarely get below 1.004. Brett will produce charcter faster under pressure although it’ll be slightly different.

I’m pretty sure the amalgamation blend will produce some solid Brett charcter rather quickly. A few of the TYB Brett strains are quick.

You only need one vial.