Carbonating "Wilds"

Does the beer have just brett or bacterias as well? With brett beers I prime the same as always, but I am cautious to make sure the fermentation has finished otherwise you know what will happen.
When it comes to beers with bacterias as well as brett, I do add in another yeast depending on how long the beer has been sitting. I've had beers sit for longer than 100 days...in that case I pitch a very small amount of US-05, which I calculate based on what I want my C02 volumes to be vs. my bottling volume.

Keep in mind a few things
1) Its hard to know how viable the yeast in the fermenter is if its been sitting for a long time (pH levels, ABV, etc..)
2) Pitching extra yeast for bottling works, calculating a volume is a bit of a crap shoot and thats okay
3) I error on the side of undercarbonating; I think these beers work just fine a bit undercarbonated
4) Give them extra time to bottle condition. Hell give em as long as you can, they'll just get better.

 

Sounds like the champagne yeast fermented some sugars in the wort that were unfermentable to the primary sacc strain (in addition to all of the priming sugar, of course).

 

Cell count (read as: "yeast volume") shouldn't have any effect on carb level, as they will simply multiply and metabolize until all of the fermentable sugars are gone.

The amount of priming sugar added along with the new yeast will determine the volume of CO2.

 

Actually it's the opposite, there are sugars that are unfermentable by champagne yeast that are fermentable by ale yeast, like maltotriose for example. The reason champagne yeast is sometimes used for bottle conditioning is because it has a higher alcohol tolerance than ale yeast.

 

Hmm... didn't know that.

Regarding the OP's comment "Generally I do 3/4 cup - 1 1/2 cups corn sugar for My ales, but I experimented w/ champagne yeast in secondary, & I found that w/ 1 cup of sugar per 5 gal it actually over carbonated Somehow... Gusher city. Anyone have any insight?"

Why the extra carbonation then?

 

Well, he measured by volume and not by mass, so that's one huge problem. There's a wide variety of other issues that could have caused his carbonation issues.

 

When I bottle a wild beer I wait until I am sure that it is done fermenting. I then add the same amount of sugar as I would for any other beer. I figure that the table sugar I am adding is 100 % fermentable by both ale yeast and the wild organisms so I do not need to adjust anything. I have had good results with this method for the 2 wild beers and 2 all brett beers I have bottled.

 

many reasons, and 42 is correct, champagne yeast as well as wine yeast cannot ferment maltotriose (aka 3rd most abundant sugar in wort generally ~12-15% of sugars) this is a nice aspect for me, as Ive been playing with wine yeasts a lot in homebrew that end up with quite a bit of maltiness even when fermented out


some of the reasons for gushers

1 - measuring by volume not weight
2 - beer wasnt done fermenting
3 - infection
4 - high abv stalled ale yeast (see #2) champagne yeast took over
5 - fusarium infected grain

 

It is true that with the extended bulk aging often done with wild ales before bottling (like six+ months) residual CO2 will be lower and you should compensate with additional priming sugar. There are online calculators you can use for this.

 

I limit the cell count because I can use one pack of US-05 for probably 20 batches of wilds...didn't mean to imply that it was necessary, just that you don't need an entire pack.

 

I usually calculate it as a regular beer and add slightly more priming sugar than needed. I figure with extended aging (1yr+) in a carboy a lot of residual CO2 is lost. That's much different than something sitting for only 100 days though. I don't think I'd overcompensate with the priming sugar but I might add some other type of yeast for bottle conditioning. I've started kegging my sours since it takes out all that guess work and potential bottling issues.

 

Word.

 

In the short term and for "clean" beers you are correct, however when brewer's yeast cells go through autolysis one of the compounds they release is the sugar trehalose, which is fermentable by Brett. Not a major concern, but could be the cause of over-carbonation in long-aged sour/funky beers.

 

Very interesting! But I still dont see how limiting the number of cells "pitched" for carbonation could limit the CO2 production...

So, after tyiping and re-typing my response, I reckon what you are getting at is that for pratical purposes when conditioning a "wild" beer one should "under-prime" to compensate for the extra carboantaion provided by the Brett from the by-products of autolysys.

... Still, I don't see how the number of sacc cells "pitched" for priming would have any effect. Again, they would multiply to metabloize the priming sugar and then die off. If anything, you would need to mitigate extra trehalose down the line by priming with less sugar to keep the sacc form multiplying too much....

Sounds hard to calculate

 

i think its fair to say that wilds require very astute guessing. i have always shot for underpriming, mostly because. think the style works fine that way, but this is interesting to learn. and i think youre right, cell counts dont matter so lng as you have viable yeast. but i would think that its possuble to have too much yeast, which wiuld in turn end up with the above mentioned scenario. i think i saw something on the mad fermentationist site about calculating that number. ill have to look around.

 

What I was trying to say is that you over-pitch yeast at bottling, you'll have more cells and thus more sugars released for the Brett down the road. Not a big deal, but a good reason not to just pitch an entire pack of yeast at bottling. I'm actually not sure how much sugar is released per gram of yeast or anything like that, probably not a major concern unless you have 1/2 of yeast at the bottom of each bottle.

 

Word.

 

i just bottled a farmhouse saison with JP dregs also added to the mix.

would it be the standard "2 weeks until carbonated" if its mixed yeasts? if it was a brett-only beer, would it still take 2 weeks to carbonate?