Brewing with Brett, rack or not?

[sstacey]

Question for the brewers who are using Brett yeast. For non-lambic beers, when fermenting with a mix of saccharomyces and brettanomyces, is it good practice to rack the beer off the primary yeast cake after the initial ferment is complete, or is reasonable to leave the beer on the yeast cake for a couple of months while the Brett does its thing?

My instinct is to rack but for lambic style beers it is good practice to leave it on the primary yeast right the way through, hence my question.

 

[sp0rk]

I'd like to know this too, about to do a 40L batch of my Hibiscus Saison and I plan on pitching half on a saison/brett blend and the other half on bottle dregs of the Bridge Rd Chevalier Saison yeast

 

[barls]

im a no rack personally.
but will rack off to go on to fruit.

 

[sp0rk]

im a no rack personally.
but will rack off to go on to fruit.

Even if aging for months at a time?

 

[Liam_snorkel]

I also don't rack. More important IMO to reduce oxygen ingress unless you like the flavour of acetic acid.

 

[Motabika]

I only rack if there's going to be a fruit addition

 

[sstacey]

Ok, thanks for the replies. I was only concerned about autolysis risk, but it seems there is not a problem.

 

[Reman]

Ok, thanks for the replies. I was only concerned about autolysis risk, but it seems there is not a problem.

Brett will eat autolysed yeast, given enough time.

 

[thumbsucker]

American Sour Beers book recommends that if you want to have strong Brett traits in your beer then you should not rack the beer, because autolysis of dead yeast helps in the formation of esters and phenols. Lambic brewers do not rack of the yeast cake for the above reason.

 

[manticle]

I've only ever sacch fermented then racked onto bugs (brett, etc) to age for 12+ months. If straight bretting, I'd hold off racking until bottling.