As the title suggests, I am planning some sour wort Brett beers. The plan is to have two beers, one with Brett c. and one with Brett l. I will make two worts. One will be soured with WY5335. The other will be split and fermented with Brett. AT some point, blending will occur. My question is about sequence. Does plan A or plan B make more sense? Plan A. Make both worts. As one sours, the other gets fermented with the Bretts. WHen the sour wort sours sufficiently, boil, cool, then blend with Brett fermentations. (I realize that half the batch will not be soured at all; that is part of the plan). Possible problem: The fermenters with Brett would not be full, so you have Brett with an oxygen headspace -- will that make an acetic problem? Plan B. Make the sour wort first. When it is sufficiently soured, boil to kill lacto. Make Brett wort. Blend brett worts with soured wort to fill two carboys. Add brett to each carboy. Advantage: Carboys are full so Brett not exposed to large headspace. Possible disadvantage. More acidity at start of Brett ferment. Or is that an advantage? Does plan A or plan B make more sense? Or are they equally lame?
My head hurts from all that... short answer, planA, sour wort with Good Belly (cheaper, more effective), takes a couple days. No issue with headspace and acetic in that short of time. I do all my 100% Brett beers in a 15 gallon HDPE barrel right now, only 11-12 gallons of beer though. Rack after 2-3 weeks primary.
Sorry for your head. I didn't think it my post was too convoluted, but knew it had that potential, since I was drinking my NEIPA when I posted. The haziness could easily have manifested itself in my post. Your answer suggests you have the crux of the matter and suggests a path forward. Thanks! I never heard of Good Belly. (googled it). So you are buying the straight shots http://goodbelly.com/good-drinks/ ? Sounds like a great idea. Their products do not appear to have WI distribution, although I suppose I could find a supplier on the net. Anyhow, they're not in my fridge right now, so I won't be making a starter with them anytime soon. but the plan is wy5335 because that is what's fridge. I liked what I got out of it for Berliner Weiss using the Jesse Caudill instructions that are out on the net. This set of beers is not intended to get that sour. If I decide they are lacking in sour, I'll look for something different the next time, or I'll try adding some fruit, or... something. Total aside -- remember you told me to Brett my maibock that I was thinking of dumping? Well, that's also going to happen. I wanted to test Brett l. in the above endeavor, because the I was looking for the cherry pie aromas that the WY strain is noted for. I made a mistake, and ended up with both WY and WL strains. The WL strain will get introduced to the maibock. I'll add some of my sour wort to this too, but obviously Brett is a secondary strain here. Brett is supposed get phunkier when phenolics are present, so Bretting a lager may not do much. Guess I'll find out.
According to Yakobson, wort pH can affect the flavors that Brett produces. It can increase attenuation for Brett as well.
@pweis909 you can also try probiotic pills if GB isn't available. Also, concerning your statement: New Belgium uses lager yeast to make the light and dark sour bases they blend to make all of their sour beers. They have a decent amount of funk in them, so I would still be optimistic.
FWIW, I just sour worted a berliner with goodbelly. I expected a lower pH drop in a span of 72 hours at 95 degrees F. Pitched 2, 8 oz servings of the GB mango and it got the wort 'tart'. I think the pH was around 3.8 when I decided to go ahead and just boil it, kill the lacto and pitch my brett starter on apricots. Samples taste real good, but I'll probably go back to inoculating with uncrushed grain next time I sour wort.
Nope.. Just collected my runnings from the mash tun (Gravity was 1.040), let cool to 100F and added the GB. Ferm wrap kept it at 95F over the course of 3 days. Not saying it didn't get sour, but from what I was reading I guess I just expected it to get an even lower pH in that amount of time. Since I fermented with Brett C I wasn't too worried about it getting too low. Still produced a great tart, refreshing beer though!
I've usually had to wait 4-5 days @90 when I pitch a carton of goodbelly into 4 gallons. It is pretty sour by that point though. Although I can't say that the last time I did so it started fermenting on its own on day 5. Poor sanitation by me, but then again five days is pretty good. The funny thing is it came out really clean!
Well, since Brett doesn't tend to struggle as much as a normal sacch strain would in a low pH environment.
I misunderstood what you were getting at. I thought you meant Brett C as opposed to some other Brett strain, like maybe C does better in low pH than B, etc.
