Brett Questions

[kirem]

The main issue is that Brettanomyces or more correctly Dekkera produces very distinctive flavours and aromas. It can also survive in low nutrient environments when other yeasts have well and truly given up and it can survive in high alcohol environments. A lot of spoilage yeasts do not like alcohol.

The main reason Dekkera gets a bad name in wineries is it is almost impossible to remove from oak. It can use cellulose as a carbon source and just keeps on living.

It is fundamentally a very difficult yeast to remove from your environment once it is present.

If you get some wild yeast species fermenting in your beer they normally die off at low alcohol levels and leave little flavour/aroma behind. Saccharomyces out competes them and continue to use up nutrients and carbon sources long after these other yeasts have died. The same happens with Dekkera and Saccharomyces. After Saccharomyces has given up, Dekkera is in an ideal environment.

My experience with it is in an academic and in an wine industry environment. and I wouldn't let it loose near my gear.

 

[brendanos]

Boil a keg, boil a dip-tube?? As Dig reported, it only takes single cells to make it through. Thirsty, by your reckoning no-one should need sanitiser ever. Just boil everything.

You cannot be that naive surely??

cheers

Darren

That's what organic breweries do.

 

[Thirsty Boy]

TB,

I think you are missing the point. Not sure if you did microbiology 101 but hot water is a very ineffective sanitiser, especially over large metal surfaces

I never said Brett was a super bug what I am saying is that if you intentionally culture Brett (or any other spoilage organism) and run it through your equipment there is certainly an increased chance of infected subsequent batches.

cheers

Darren

Fair point - even though I like to argue with you.... I can't argue with that.

Kirk - Thanks for that. Although I technically "knew" all that, I hadn't had the necessary train of thought to assemble it into such a succinct explanation that makes so much sense. I consider myself slightly more educated than I was before.

I'm still not particularly frightened of Brett, but at least now I am prepared for the fact that I might discover in an unfortunate way, that I was just an overconfident douchbag.

Thirsty

 

[kirem]

The other thing to be mindful of is there are a large number of strains. Their is a strain isolated from lemonade.

Some of the strains produce quite a nice character. The ratio of 4ep:4eg:4ec and 4vp:4vg:4ec and fatty acids give each strain a different character.

Here is a nice article related to beer;

http://www.brewbasement.com/cellaring-scie...k-in-your-beer/

 

[kevo]

Will aging a 'bretted' beer in a fermenter with an air lock before bottling help to minimise the chance of bottle bombs?

If CO2 can be expelled through an air lock over an extended period, then bottled and carbonated, hopefully most of the sugars might be consumed - would this decrease the chances of grenades?

Would hydrometer readings be helpful with this over time? Once the SG has reached a suitable low, prime and bottle.

The batch I have I'm planning to age for a considerable amount of time and then bottle in champagne bottles.

Any thoughts?

Kev

 

[dig]

Sorry guys, a few replies:

Mika - Nah, it didn't take five years to clean the brewery; a brewery is never clean (at least never clean enough)

Goat - Just one batch affected. The bbt may have been contaminated for some time but all the 'bright' beers go though a sterile filter pack on their way to the filler, so it was only the unfiltered wheat beer that was packed straight from the tank that had a problem. And I recall now that it wasn't a 'Mad Brewers' beers.

Ausdb - Nah, the bbts are all still there (the last time I looked). Cleaned with acid and nuked with proxitane. Job done.

 

[brendanos]

Well at least the death of the wheat beer spawned the golden ale (or so I was told at the time), and that has to be a good thing, right?

 

[Stuster]

Kev, definitely a good idea to give the brett some time to chomp through the things it's going to eat before bottling. I did a brett porter last year and gave it six months in secondary with the brett. I still have a few bottles and have opened a few recently. None are over-carbonated at all. I don't think you need to give it six months, but I'd say it needs at least a month if not longer to make sure you're not going to have bombs.

 

[randyrob]

Hey Guys,

this topic has taken an interesting turn!

here's a pic i just took of a beer in secondary i added a pure brett yeast cake to about a month ago:





i thought it would be a pretty good candidate for the brett treatment becauce saccharomyces only managed to get it down to 1016,
so the brett should chew its way through a fair bit more of it and leave it a dryer bigger beer.

will be curious to see if this ends up being a house flavour seeing as i'm fermenting 6 other beers in the same space!

Cheers Rob.

 

[mika]

Plenty of bleach in the airlock, she be sweet

 

[kevo]

Just thinking - if I chuck some oak chips into the batch I'm doing currently - how likely is it they'll be impregnated with brett so I can just use the chips to brett a beer in the future?

Bigger contamination risk for the rest of my brews?

Kev

 

[brendanos]

Oak chips or cubes are a great way to keep brett. They love living in/feeding off oak, and i recall an american craft brewery (new belgium?) recently giving away innoculated oak cubes as a prize in a competition.

 

[kevo]

Once dried, how much of a contamination risk would 'bretted' oak chips/cubes be?

kev

 

[neonmeate]

I did a brett porter last year

DAMN that was a great beer