Wild Brettanomyces yeast stripping away malt flavours

[TimT]

So my wild yeast Brett thing that I captured from apple peels last year is going great guns. Does the primary fermentation quickly, doesn't need temp control (my philosophy has pretty much been, if it's learned to survive in the wild, it can keep on doing that), and doesn't ever seem to get infections. I've done two proper ferments on it now, a hoppy mild ale and a Red IPA thing that is ageing now.

Only....

The Brett is stripping a lot of malt flavours away. So when you taste the ale you'll get what seems to me a kind of apple-y taste to it. Hard to describe beyond that. It's got the IPA down from a gravity of 1.063 to around 1.010, so it's chewed up a lot of sugar, though not all of it.

The pay-off, of course, is that given a few months it should start developing some really interesting characteristics. In the past I've noticed it throwing up not only apple-y smells and tastes, but mead smells and tastes, and bready smells and tastes.

But I'm kind of interested to know what's going on with this yeast. Like, is this a characteristic of all Brett yeasts, because being wild they tend to be much more adaptable and hence much more flexible when it comes to digesting sugars? Might there be a way to, say, calm it down so it gives a more rounded flavour?

Interested to know folks thoughts on this.

 

[bradmccoy]

How did you go about cultivating the culture from apple peels?

 

[Liam_snorkel]

It pretty much will eat anything given time. Have you watched chad yakobson's brett presentation on youtube? he found that with sugars - it eats the simple sugars first, then chops the more comlpex sugars into simple ones & eats them, then moves onto starches etc in the same fashion.. and so on with more complex molecules.

 

[TimT]

Put some apple peel in a jar of malt extract. When I got some action, grew the yeast on successively larger quantities of malt/water.

 

[TimT]

It pretty much will eat anything given time. Have you watched chad yakobson's brett presentation on youtube? he found that with sugars - it eats the simple sugars first, then chops the more comlpex sugars into simple ones & eats them, then moves onto starches etc in the same fashion.. and so on with more complex molecules.

Om nom nom nom nom. That's my little yeast. Well, I'll be interested to see how it ages. It seems to have a different ester every time I use it. One of the early ones was the nailpolish remover (mmm, aromatic), but after that I started getting mead vibes and bread smells from it.

 

[TimT]

Brad - I talk about the process of me harvesting and growing the yeast here.

 

[Mr. No-Tip]

I like the "survive in the wild" angle. We got some juice from Barlow earlier this year and declined to have it pasteurised. It was fermenting by the time we got home with a milky white yeast that somehow managed to stay heavily in suspension and make trub so thick a high pressure hose struggled to move it.

Oddly it continued to ferment even at very low temps (tried to arrest ferment but failed, but a batch put onto a saison yeast and brought two high 20s killed off the apple yeast. Winter wild!

 

[TimT]

Hey, you should have poured some of the krausening yeast off the top and harvested it!

Given the extremely hungry nature of these Bretts I think I'm going to do bog-standard ale malts on it from now on; I was hoping to get a bit more Maris Otter character from this. Though it does have this back sweetness to it that I think is coming from someone of the Munich malt I used.

 

[Yeastfridge]

Yeast, whether wild, brett or cultivated, doesn't care what your beer tastes like, it's an organism that's trying to reproduce and continue to survive. The by-product happens to be something we like. The "it survived in the wild so I'll treat it rough" idea is nice as an idea but it probably survived in the wild because it made a harsher environment than other bugs could tolerate (usually higher acidity, sometimes "killer" fermentation by products that other yeasts can't survive in), and encouraging harsh fermentation by-products by having big temperature fluctuations or no temperature control will probably accentuate the harshness. That said, I do the same thing with my sours and bretted beers, more because I don't own any temp controlling equipment.

Brett is brett. I don't know if you can tame it in a short period of time. The commercial brett is isolated from breweries and wineries using brett but as far as I know it's probably similar to the wild stuff more so than brewing yeast is to wild yeast. If you want to round out the flavour you could maybe blend it with another beer fermented with a clean yeast, or use a different yeast altogether. What's the point of using it if you want it to do something other than what it does?

 

[TimT]

Thanks. I like its wild funk but I'm a bit lost with it, having never brewed with other (ie, store bought) Bretts. Hence my question. It's very impressive in primary fermentation; ferments quickly and reliably - so I don't think it's too unhealthy. Another reason I've been keeping it in the shed is I'm a bit worried about having it in close proximity to my other brews - though it would probably be a kinder sort of wild yeast infection than some of the other ones I've heard about lately.

 

[mje1980]

I think brewing malty beers with brett is asking a bit much. It eats everything and will attenuate right down. I wouldn't bottle any brett beer over 1.008 or so. 100% brett fermentations are much different though, but that's commercially isolated brett, so no other competing strains/bugs/pathogens. You really have no idea what you've got there.

 

[TimT]

You really have no idea what you've got there.

^ Pretty much. At first I thought it was two yeasts, a normal saccharomyces yeast and a wild Brett yeast because very different things happened in the primary and secondary fermentation - ie rapid and impressive fermentation, followed by a pellicle in a week or so. Now I accept that maybe that's just what this yeast does. But I'm not sure how yeast operates in the wild - stronger, more hardy wild colonies could theoretically form teams, surely, so you could get a sacch yeast and a Brett yeast working together? Or it could be a SCOBY, a Brett yeast and a bacteria, which might also help to explain why it doesn't seem to get infected.

 

[Danscraftbeer]

Put some apple peel in a jar of malt extract. When I got some action, grew the yeast on successively larger quantities of malt/water.

Interesting. Um,(silly question probably). Just the peel into thick liquid extract or diluted with water?
Was the peel fresh cut or dried?

I've never brewed a Saison but interested in the concept especially a home grown developed yeast strain etc.

 

[mje1980]

I'm a relatively noob brewer of Brett beers and sours. Even with commercial strains you're kind of at the mercy of the yeast ( Brett ) and/or bacteria ( lacto, pedio etc ). Be very careful you don't grow something really nasty.

Its a bit like making your own car tyres IMHO, like why would you when there's exactly what you want/need cheaply available from your pc/iPad/phone, and it can easily go wrong.

If your heart is set on it, then disregard the above

 

[Danscraftbeer]

That is logic I have strictly abided by for my 120 brews so far. I just got what looks like an infection but the beer passes the taste tests. After I kegged it I literally gasped when I took the jacket off the empty fermenter and saw the infection. (recent photos in the Infection thread). Bottled some of the 3rd culture yeast cake.
Who knows! B)

 

[TimT]

Hahaha. Said culture is currently sitting in a jar in the living room. I burp the jar occasionally to make sure it doesn't build up any excess CO2. I haven't had the time or the inclination to do another wild brew with that yeast in a while, though I did follow through with this yeast and enter a brew into my club's IPA comp.

Danscraftbeer - I diluted the extract with water. I can't actually remember all the details now! I would have just dissolved a tablespoon or so of extract in a jar of clear water. Fresh cut peel.

I've been learning a bit about these wild yeast cultures since; I got one suggestion that a way to help tame this culture might be to dose it with commercial yeasts during its fermentation - to encourage some kind of cross breeding and make it pick up some commercial characteristics. I think that makes sense. Not sure which yeast to use?

Meantime, I've signed up to the facebook group Milk the Funk - a group devoted to the weirder brewing cultures out there - Bretts and lacto-bacillis and what not. And someone there suggested that the culture may not be a "Brett" proper, that in fact Bretts are relatively rare in the wild, and that what I have may just be a wild Saccharomyces - some of which tend to form pellicles, too.

So basically - when I picked the yeast up, I had no idea what it was. Now I've picked the yeast up again - I have even less of an idea what it might be!

 

[Danscraftbeer]

but it tastes good though otherwise you wouldn't be posting about it or reculturing it I gather.

Australia isn't really a yeast producer. I guess its a very small laboratory. :unsure:

As thoughts thrown out there already: Australian Saison style yeast strain. Brewing dudes doing this already I'd think.
I'm scared of Sour Beers especially that they take 2 years.
Something in between Ales/lagers/Saison/Sours.
That would be a fine thing but its not something you could purchase. Its a home cultured one of a kind. Its an interesting concept. B) I'm into this even if I fail. Hey that's just brewing anyway ha!

 

[hirschb]

I've been learning a bit about these wild yeast cultures since; I got one suggestion that a way to help tame this culture might be to dose it with commercial yeasts during its fermentation - to encourage some kind of cross breeding and make it pick up some commercial characteristics. I think that makes sense. Not sure which yeast to use?

I don't think that'll work. The amount of (potentially) crossed yeast would be overwhelmed by the normal wild/commercial yeasts. Developing hybrid yeast strains is something for a yeast lab, not a home brewer. That being said, 100% brett and sacch/brett mixed ferminations act very differently. It really depends what you are going for: wild yeast for wild yeast sake? or "classic" brett character? I'd personally make a test batch with a simple grist bill, add the wild brett, age at least 3 months, bottle when gravity is stable, then slowly drink the bottles over 1-2 years to see what the yeast tastes like over time.