Brett at Bottling

I'd be wary of sealing up anything with Brett at bottling. Unless you know the exact remaining sugar profile it sounds like a good way to make bottle bombs, depending on the strain it will eat everything remaining. Besides, the reason Brett is added either as a primary or secondary yeast is to provide a funky characteristic, and it usually takes a couple months at least.

 

It's a risk. I've done it as a way to experiment with several Brett strains, but with the knowledge that the beer might become over-carbonated. Thicker bottles are good insurance, although if they burst there will be more glass and more pressure... a drop of ~.003 will carbonate a saison without added sugar, so if you do sugar plus a .005 drop you can see how quickly things can get out of hand. The drier you can get the base beer the better, 1.003 or lower to be safe.

One White Labs vial of Brett is fine for 5 gallons. One Wyeast pack is probably overkill.

 

I always use plastic soda bottles for my Brett beers Impossible to blow up, but they could still be gushers. I just don't want to have to clean up exploded beer off of my ceilings. Again.....

 

@OldSock any idea how many vols of co2 approximately a .003 drop in SG will yield. 3 vols? Any charts or info on this??

 

It'll depend on how much CO2 was saturated in the wort to start. Each .001 drop produces about .5 volumes of CO2 (according to Kai). So a drop of .003 plus the standard residual carbonation of ~.8 volumes from fermentation will give you ~2.3 volumes of CO2.

Another way to think about it: it takes 1.8 oz of table sugar or 1.9 oz of corn sugar raises the gravity of 5 gallons of beer by .001. So the fermentation of .003 worth of residual extract is equivalent to adding ~5.4 oz of table sugar (5.7 oz of corn sugar). Granted that in either of these cases the gravity may end up more than .003 lower thanks to the creation of alcohol.

 

Would degassing the beer prior to bottling be a good idea or at least give you a more controllable carbonation? I'm thinking it would remove the guess work of how much co2 is dissolved and you'd have less variables to deal with.

 

No more so than any other beer. If you know the peak temperature of the beer post-fermentation, a priming sugar calculator will give you a good-enough estimate of how much CO2 is dissolved in the "flat" beer. Many large commercial breweries go the other way, force carbing most of the way and only relying on bottle conditioning for the last little bit of CO2.

 

I've used brett brux a lot when bottling my Orval clone, 2 drops per 12 oz. ( plus my normal 1 cup of priming sugar per 6 gallons) I've done 150 gallons so far without a problem.
I would say 6 months is a good time frame to wait, but I usually get at them long before that.

 

What about just dumping in the dregs of a few bottles of Orval into the bottling bucket and stirring it up? Sounds like 3 vols of CO2 from the sugar, no bottle grenades huh?

Also, could you post up your recipe? I'd love to try it!

 

I've never tried using the dregs, not sure how it would work out. I have a problem with carbonation unless I use that much sugar, it's worked real well for me. Most of my beers are over 8%.

Here is the recipe

for 6 gallons

13 lbs of pilsen malt
1 lb caravienne
.125 lbs special B
1 lb table sugar
.83 oz centennial 60 min
.83 oz styrian goldings 15 min
.83 oz styrian goldings 1 min

wyeast 1214 or the real stuff wlp 510 if you can find it. I've had good luck with both

cheers

 

Thanks! Also, where did you get your Brett? Harvest, buy it?

 

I buy it

http://www.northernbrewer.com/shop/wyeast-brettanomyces-bruxellensis.html