I am thinking about doing a Brett Bitter to build up the yeast for a future sour. What are your experiences with brett pale ales, and which brett strains are preferred? Makes me wonder, since this won't be aged, how much of the brett character will be noticeable and how much effect each strain would have. I am very limited knowledge wise with these strains of yeast, and I figure there are some good opinions out there to help me out.
I am still a definite newbie in the world of brett so take everything I say with a grain of salt. I don't know that this is a good idea. A healthy brett starter can be a good thing, but will tend to give you a relatively "clean" brett profile. My experience with this is with the beers of Crooked Stave, when Chad wants to ferment out a beer at roughly an ale yeast timetable, he builds up a healthy pitch and gets a relatively clean fermentation. As I noted above, with a healthy pitch, small beer and little to no aging, the brett character will probably be minimal. But I have found that minimal brett character in something like a bitter is actually a very good thing. It can give a nice subtle complexity without totally stealing the show. With that said, I know very little about the different strains so I can't help you there but I can say that the best practice is typically to pitch dregs from bottles with the characteristics that you like and hopefully those will be present in your version. So going back to the core of your question, why do you even think you need to build up the yeast for a future sour? (not saying you should or shouldn't just haven't really heard this practice with sours before so I am curious)
] I'll be playing with dregs from bottles on the sour, but I am not sure I want to use them in this beer. Lacto and Pedio are not cultures I am looking for in the bitter. Guess my main reason is to get a few beers out of a brett pack, I can always try and control pitch rates after saving and cleaning the yeast as well.
