What should I do with this bière de garde?

It's difficult to judge a beers final flavor based on a young flat sample. If you want to try to recoup the expenses, my suggestions are: 1) Bottle it, if it's no good, pour it and learn from the ordeal. 2) Bottle it, if it is drinkable but not enjoyable, use it to stretch commercial beer and learn from the ordeal. 3) Bottle it, if it is enjoyable then succes and learn from the ordeal. Other possible solutions would be to dump it immediately and rebrew taking into consideration everthing that went wrong this time.

 

I wouldn't brett anything that you wouldn't drink beforehand. It's like cooking with bad wine.

 

Large doses of dry hops can sometimes hide a mistake . . . get 'em talking about the Amarillo or Citra or ? ? ?

 

It doesn't sound like the effort to bottle would be worth it. But, it sounds like there is a lot left in the beer for brett to work on. Grab a bottle of Orval, enjoy the Orval and pitch the dregs in the fermenter and see what happens. Best case you end up with magic, worst case is you enjoyed a bottle of Orval

 

What exactly are your expectations here?

From the White Labs website:

“WLP011 European Ale Yeast

Malty, Northern European-origin ale yeast. Low ester production, giving a clean profile. Little to no sulfur production. Low attenuation helps to contribute to the malty character. Good for Alt, Kolsch, malty English ales, and fruit beers.”

It seems to me that other than the specific gravity aspects your beer is consistent with this yeast strain.

Cheers!

 

Below is from the BJCP style guidelines:

“24C. Bière de Garde

Overall Impression: A fairly strong, malt-accentuated, lagered artisanal beer with a range of malt flavors appropriate for the color. All are malty yet dry, with clean flavors and a smooth character.”

I have had a number of commercially brewed Bière de Garde beers and they have all been consistent with the above description.

You could have brewed your beer using an expressive Belgian yeast strain (e.g., Wyeast 3787) and it would have the Belgiany character that you seem to desire but the resulting beer would not have been a Bière de Garde in my opinion.

Cheers!

 

If you are only thinking of 1 gallon, then yes one bottle's dregs would be enough. You would just need to give the dregs time to work. An easy 1 gallon fermenter is the glass jugs that apple juice comes in. You could also use a couple of growlers.

 

Make a small starter of 3711, pitch it, wait a month and then bottle. That should dry it out (perhaps more than you'd like) and provide a small amount of the "belgiany" yeast characteristics you're looking for.

 

On the other hand, if you dose 5 gallons with Orval dregs, at this ratio, you get to drink 5 bottles of Orval.

 

If there aren't any off flavors present, you could try drying it out with an attenuative strain like wlp644 or 3711 or even age it (or part of it) on brett. If you are unhappy with it, dump it. If you don't want to dump it, bottle/keg and chalk it up to a learning experience.