So I've got 10 gallons of a blonde ale sitting down in my basement right now. I used a caught wild yeast strain to ferment it. O.G. was 1.046 and it's sitting around 1.006 now. Gravity hasn't moved anywhere past that in a week. I'm thinking of waiting at least a month (so another 2.5 weeks) before I bottle this batch. The taste is very clean - nice Belgian-y banana esters, with some spiciness - more like a saison, really. I've been toying with the idea of adding brett at bottling to around 12 of the bottles. It'll be a blend of Brett C. and THIS guy. Just using a standard pipette to put 2-3 drops of the slurry per bottle, and then cap it. Is 1.006 a safe gravity to add brett at bottling? I'm always down to try new techniques, and I have yet to try adding brett to the bottle. I've read that brett under pressure causes all sorts of interesting flavors. I know there are a few variables here given that I'm adding it to a beer with wild yeast, but does this technique sound about right? ** using around 3.75 oz of table sugar to prime per 5-gal, and plan on bottling the bretted ones with thick Belgian and German pint bottles. The rest of the batch will get the standard 12 oz bottles. Thanks!
I would "underprime" the brett bottles just to be on the safe side. I have some brett saisons that foam a lot after a year in the bottle (no bombs yet).
I would also under prime and good call on the heavy duty bottles. Maybe shoot for 1.5 Vols of Co2. Might take longer to hit the carb your looking for but I'm confident that it definitely will.
Thanks. Yea normally I'll use anywhere between 4.5-5 oz of table sugar to prime, so 3.75-4.0 oz should be a safe amount, given that wild yeast is a high attenuator and the brett will be doing its thing as well.
Yea... I almost feel as if I'll have to prime the bretted bottles separately from the rest of the batch then. Since I don't want to end up with the un-bretted blonde ales only carbing up to 1.5 vol. Maybe I'll just transfer a gallon of the batch into a 1-gal carboy, add the brett there, and let that sit as a side batch for another few months.
That gravity is low enough that you could probably prime as usual, if not a little under. Your 3 drops is a little low. I'd go for the ratio Michael Tonsmeire uses. Roughly: 10 for a 12oz bottle, 14/15 for pints, and 20 for bombers. I did this with some Belgians I made. A great way to introduce brett and see what develops without risking a batch. The more sugar you use at bottling the quicker it will carb...but won't develop complexity for quite a few months. Its your call.
Just depends on the gravity, really. If it's low enough then things should be ok. i decided against this method though
But Brett can eat sugars that Sach cannot. Unless you've done it in secondary, you don't know how much lower it will go. And if you're also priming...
Right, but many say that if a beer has reached an FG of 1.008 or less, then it's safe to add brett at bottling. Believe me, I've had a hard time at trusting this method as well, because I know how attenuative brett can be, but I've heard it works. Just add a bit less priming sugar. Others may be able to chime in here that have actually done it before. On a side note, I've decided against bottling with brett. One of my wild yeast batches (yeast harvested from peach skins) is showing a pellicle on the surface, so I'm transferring that one to a secondary and adding brett. Hopefully it'll clean up over the next 4-5 months. The other batch (yeast harvested from my herb garden) is gonna be bottled as is. I'll wait on 'bretting at bottling' til another time, sadly
Call me a stickler for consistency and repeat-ability, but I'd be more apt to brew it, add the Brett to secondary, see what it goes down to, then decide. If you haven't done that, you may not end up with bottle bombs, but you're completely guessing on your carbonation level.
I completely agree man. That was my sole reason for posting this thread, because I've been weary of trying this method for a while now. My reasoning is that it's been done many times before, so what's the trick? Maybe we'll hear back from some others on this..
From what I've seen, people guess on the carbonation. Sometimes they hit it, and sometimes, they don't. I'd rather not take that risk.
at 1.006, you're looking at a solid 3 volumes of carbonation if brett attenuates it down to zero, which it may. Or may not. I've had mixed results adding brett at bottling with and without priming sugar. It comes down to knowing the beer and brett strain you're working with. I don't think I'd go heavy on the priming sugar (maybe 1.5 volumes) because the brett will likely plow through at least a couple of those points and create more carbonation. This could take a few weeks, or six months.
I opted for transferring both batches onto the Yeast Bay's Amalgamation blend. Luckily, I had built up a fresh starter of it with some of the leftover wort from this same blonde ale on brew day, so I was essentially blending them with the same beer in the end. There's already some awesome looking zombie skin forming on the surface . Gonna wait it out for quite a while in secondary
