100% Brett Trois IPA Recipe
Beers fermented with only Brettanomyces (as opposed to the more traditional secondary fermentation following brewer's yeast) are starting to really gain some traction. There was an initial wave of excitement in 2004-2005 when Pizza Port (Mo' Betta Bretta) and Russian River (Sanctification) released two of the first 100% Brett beers. I started this blog not much after by posting a recipe for my first 100% Brett beer, a fruity low-gravity saison.
Recently there seems to has been another wave of interest in 100% Brett beers, thanks in no small part to Chad Yakobson’s research and enthusiasm for the technique. Chad is fermenting almost all of his beers at Crooked Stave with a variety of Brett strains, most of which he has isolated from beers and wines. Rather than featuring funky Brett byproducts as the dominate flavor, he is making spiced, hoppy, and dark beers that gain fruity-complexity from the unique fermentation. It is also exciting to see the recent re-release of Mo’ Betta Bretta (I'm looking forward to trying the bottle Jacob picked up for me... assuming Peter and Tomme were joking about the pineapple, garlic, and oregano?).
The batch I brewed last weekend was inspired by one of my favorite 100% Brett beers, the 2010 New York ultra-collaborative Super Friends IPA. Brewed at Ithaca with help from the brewers of Captain Lawrence, Ommegang, Southampton, and Flying Fisher, it was hopped with Citra and fermented with BSI Brett brux var. Drie and smaller amounts of a few other strains. Bright and citrusy hops with a complementary fruity-funkiness made for a unique IPA. With the release of White Labs Brett brux Trois, their version of Brett Drie, I decided to brew something similar. Hopefully White Lab's strain has similar characteristics to the original, which was isolated from a bottle of Drie Fonteinen J&J Blauw at the behest of Adam Avery. It will be interesting to see, especially considering Chad identified two separate isolates in the BSI culture.
I played around with the hops a bit, adding some Centennial to the Citra for complementary citrus character, and a bit of Chinook to keep it from being too fruity. I liked the combination of Citra and Chinook in the second runnings American Bitter I brewed two years ago, but I wanted to reduce the resiny/grapefruit character from the Chinook. I added a half pound of acid malt after starch conversion to provide some lactic acid for the Brett to create the fruity ester ethyl lactate.
Super 100% Brett IPA
Recipe Specifics
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Batch Size (Gal): 5.25
Total Grain (Lbs): 13.50
Anticipated OG: 1.064
Anticipated SRM: 4.3
Anticipated IBU: 96.5
Brewhouse Efficiency: 69 %
Wort Boil Time: 75 Minutes
Grain
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70.4% - 9.50 lbs. Canadian Pale "2-Row"
22.2% - 3.00 lbs. German Wheat Malt
3.7% - 0.50 lbs. Cara-Pils Dextrine Malt
3.7% - 0.50 lbs. Acid Malt
Hops
-----5 ml HopShot (Extract) @ 60 min.
1.50 oz. Centennial (Pellet, 8.50% AA) @ 60 min.
2.00 oz. Centennial Pellet (Pellet, 8.50% AA) @ 0 min.
1.00 oz. Citra (Whole, 10.00% AA) @ 0 min.
1.00 oz. Chinook (Whole, 13.00% AA) @ Hop-Back
1.00 oz. Citra (Whole, 10.00% AA) @ Hop-Back
2.50 oz. Citra (Whole, 10.00% AA) @ Dry Hop
1.50 oz. Centennial (Pellet, 8.50% AA) @ Dry Hop
1.00 oz. Chinook (Whole, 13.00% AA) @ Dry Hop
Extras
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0.50 - Whirlfloc @ 15 min.
0.50 tsp - Yeast Nutrient @ 15 min.
Yeast
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WLP644 - White Labs Brettanomyces bruxellensis Trois
Water Profile
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Profile: Pliny the Water
Mash Schedule
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Sacch Rest - 60 min @ 153 F
Notes
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HopRocket for the 0 min hops.
6/22/12 300 ml starter of WL Brett Trois, started.
6/28/12 Stepped up to 1.6 l (pitched .1 L into Berliner weisse)
7/1/12 Brewed with Keith
4 gallons distilled plus 5 gallons filtered DC tap water. 10 g gypsum, 3 g CaCl.
Added acid malt for the last 20 minutes of the mash since the pH was already low enough without it.
Fly sparged into Peter's keggle. Hot break.
One bag of ice was not enough for the pre-chiller for the plate chiller, only got the temperature down to 78. Put in the fridge for four hours to bring it down the rest of the way.
65 F ambient temp for fermentation.
No apparent fermentation the next morning, but when I shook the Better Bottle there was a huge CO2 release that cause it to blow off.
7/9/12 Moved out of cold room to 75 F to help finish fermentation.
7/12/12 Gravity down to 1.010, fermentation appears about finished. Big fruity flavor, hard to distinguish hops from the Brett.
7/22/12 Kegged with the bagged dry hops. Extra 3 cups put into a plastic bottle with 6 Chinook cones, force carbed.
8/23/12 What a terrific, tropical-fruity, balanced, quenching, summer IPA!
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43 comments:
Nice Summary on this yeast and its history. I look forward to see how your results compare to what I've experienced.
Do you think this beer has a chance to make it into the Modern Times beer lineup?
Could you recommend a good commercial bret beer for a beginner? Been brewing awhile but never really dove into the bret beers and I'd like to try a good example.
We’ll see how it turns out, but I like the idea of doing some quicker funky beers to put on tap while the barrel program is getting up and running. I could also see us doing smaller 100% Brett versions of some of our beers, as The Bruery does.
Are you talking about any beer with Brett, or a 100% Brett beer? Orval is the classic beer for Brett bruxellensis bottle conditioning. As far as 100% Brett beers go, I think the recently release "Brett Beer" from New Belgium is the most widely distributed (although I have heard mixed things about the flavor). Depending on where you live there may be others available.
I'd like to talk to you about a better way to chill. It is my least favorite part of my brew day and if I could get it down to under 10 minutes I would be thrilled.
I’m brewing a hoppy American wheat this Saturday if you’d like to come by to see the new cooling rig in action.
Thanks. I'll start with the Orval. I've seen it but never tried it.
I love my therminator. I recycle the cooled wort back into the kettle. It takes me 15 minutes to cool 13 gallons from 212 edgrees down to tap water temperature. I then let all of the hot and cold break settle out before draining the wort into my fermentor. I like to have as clean a wort as possible. You metioned that you fill your fermenter directly from the therminator. Are you concerend at all about the hot break, cold break, and possible hop debris creating off flavors in your brew? It would be an interesting experiment to ferment half of a batch with hot and cold break and the other half without and compare the differences.
Thanks for the blog.
Could you clarify when one should use a stir plate for propping up different bugs?
Also, what guidelines in general regarding oxygenation should one follow when propping up, or fermenting with, pure brett or mixed cultures?
For other cases I've considered doing something similar, but returning the wort to the kettle would defeat the purpose of using a hopback. I bagged the kettle hops, and the whole hop-back hops did a pretty good job of filtering out the hot break, but it was a lot of cold break in the fermentor. I’ve never had an issue transferring hops or break material to primary though. As far as I'm aware most professional brewers allow the cold break into the fermentor.
Brett is a yeast, so I treat it just like Saccharomyces. It does take a bit longer to grow, so I just leave it on the stir-plate for a few days longer for each step. Lacto and Pedio do not need oxygen, so I just grow them without aerating. This post gives more details on maintaining cultures, but let me know if you have any questions it doesn’t cover.
Interesting. I had no idea Orval was anything other then a typical Belgian ale. I need to do another tasting! And read up a bit.
That is one of the great things about Orval. Fresh it is actually pretty clean and hoppy (it is dry hopped), but with age it develops wonderfully rustic/funky flavors. Really the classic "Brett finished" beer.
Great information; I have a vial of WLP644 waiting to go into an all Brett beer this weekend. Would underpitching the Brett cause off flavors or would it just cause a longer fermentation?
Under pitching will lead to more cell growth, which will create more byproduct. However, I’d be worried about the long lag time for pitching out of a tube (compared to an undersized starter). I remember reading about someone pitching a tube of White Labs Brett into five gallons of wort and not seeing activity for 17 days. In that time you could get the growth of all sorts of unwanted microbes. The Brett also wouldn't be healthy and you could get under-attenuation as a result.
If you want more “classic” Brett character, I’d do a mixed fermentation with brewer’s yeast and Brett with a long aging period.
Good luck!
Mike, it may have been my blog you read about the 17 day lag on. http://1227brewing.blogspot.com/2011/03/brett-2.html
My first attempt was amazing and is still the best beer I have ever made. My second attempt using the one vial pitch method resulted in a beer full of Vynl like phenols, its been sitting for a while and it doesn't look promising. I think a small starter may give the fruit, or maybe some acid malt that Brett can convert into ethyl lactate.
I ended up making a 1l starter. I turned off the stir plate after a day and after a few hours it looks like the Brett is still in suspension, about 7/8ths of the volume. There is only a small layer on the bottom of the flask. I am going to add in another 0.5l of wort today and then it will be pitched on Sunday.
Thanks for the advice.
Wondering how this beer turned out for you? YMMV and all but I had an extremely active fermentation within a day of pitching my 644 vial. Wasn't a huge saison, about 1055, but it didn't produce any noticeably different smells during fermentation when I racked another slightly stronger wort onto it afterwords. Mainly I felt like they undersold the solvent character because that was certainly dominating and mango or pineapple in my experience but I don't worry at all about things like this since I leave beer in relatively open fermentations and skim them pretty regularly the first few days. Better out than in. The yeast I've worked with that compares the most favorably in terms of its quick initial burst of fermentation along with a tediously slow floc. process would be DuPont saison dregs.
Your recipe is intriguing and I'd be very interested in making a beer like this using some of these WLP644 dregs so I could enjoy some of this strains' results before my bottles of saison are ready to try next spring.
This batch just went onto gas last weekend. My first impression of the still under-carbonated beer is of pineapple juice in the aroma. Bright, fresh, tropical, fruity, juicy etc. The flavor might be slightly too bitter, but that may be the hop particulate. With the big citrusy hops though it is hard to say for sure what aromatics are from the fermentation though.
I’m planning to use some of the slurry from this batch to prime a Belgian single I’ll bottle in a couple weeks.
Did you pitch a vial without a starter? If so I’m not surprised that there were some off-flavors (although I’m surprised how quickly it started fermenting), these vials are really intended to pitch along with or following a brewer’s yeast strain.
If I wasn't clear what I meant to say is that I didn't notice major differences in what I would consider on-flavors for the type of beer I was going for, i.e. more Isovaleric than Caprylic/Butyric acids, between the batch I pitched with the vial and the following batch made on its cake. Unfortunately I was racking my second beer yesterday and that one has developed another issue I've not previously encountered that tastes a bit like the oxidative yeasts to me, although its novelty clouds my ability to perform a very accurate sensory analysis. I believe I left it out too long in a bucket in this hot, bacterial-laden atmosphere. I should emphasize that I like to brew in a fairly rustic manner- I live on an organic farm in TN and grow a good bit of my own base malt and also some cascade and fuggles. I generally ferment open in buckets with lids lightly resting on top of the buckets, then close the bucket after the beer is mostly done (depending on style) and leave it for a week or a few (again style dependent) and then I will go ahead and transfer to either one of my ten gallon wine barrels or a carboy in my ~60F cellar. I carbonate farmhouse, British, and wheat beers cask-style in corny kegs with C02 for extra gas if I need it as well as dispensing pressure (I like to get belgian beers/hefes *really* carbed). My first Brett. experiments were done with my own fruits as inoculant for a couple years, but this summer I decided to try out some of the commercial non-sach yeast cultures as well as culturing a few of my favorite wild yeasts from commercial breweries and while looking for some information came upon your site and several others out there as well. I have to add that I attribute much of the quality of my beer to having access to a delicious and totally pure supply of water along with top-quality ingredients.
I mash my farmhouse-family beers along a slightly modified version of the DuPont schedule outlined in Markowski because it works for me- it allows me to get a complex mash without actually doing anything but stirring every so often. I don't really care about low mash efficiencies because they are highly fermentable/digestible and the folks who made these 200 years ago had under-modified grains and a poor understanding of the science of brewing, but I believe the beer was in many cases better than it is today. I basically try to think about what would make German lager brewers mad, and then do all those things! Another goal of mine is to produce beer with a minimum of effort and expense. Cost of my brewing rig is only two kettles and the barely modified Xtreme. I do usually create yeast starters but in this case I wanted to see the yeast achieve a very full expression of its organic acids and esters. Unfortunately, its obvious that I'll need to close off my fermentation schedule and/or tighten up my sanitation practices for using Brett. yeasts in isolation. As I'm sure you're aware there are several examples of beers which are deliberately underpitched for the development of the acids/esters I was hoping to produce (Ethyl Isobutarate, Ethyl Isovalerate, 4-vinyl-guiacol, etc.) and that was the main reason I didn't want to build up a culture (I also wanted to have under and over pitched examples of the yeast in beer for sensory anaylsis so that I could start zeroing in on my optimum pitching rate which can be very different among ale yeast strains IMO). Another one of the reasons I wanted to try some new Brett. cultures was that I had grown accustomed to the species which seem to inhabit both the air when I've left beer exposed and my unwashed but clean fruit directly placed into fermenting beer (they are different, but similar- the oxygen works well to produce Old Ale/Porter infections).
Although the second batch I made onto the relatively fresh yeast cake developed an undesirable contaminant that I mentioned earlier, I'm currently quite happy with the underpitched beer I made first which is also in secondary. It was made on June 17th, about 1045-ish, and after a week two pounds of strawberries and one pound of raspberries were added (strawberries were frozen so they provided no additional yeast). This confirmed another suspicion that I had about these yeasts which is that, while purity is a desirable component of commercial beer because of its repeatability, this is at the sacrifice of the indescribably rustic loveliness of beers produced with the artisanal blends of yeast which were the norm before Pasteur and co. Anyhow I was really wondering if anyone had gotten the sort of solventy, 4-ethyl-phenol flavors that turned up the second time around, and this post was all I could find to triangulate my experiences before deciding whether or not to invest another beer on this still unknown yeast. So thanks again, I'm certainly looking forward to reading about your future brewing endeavors as well as how this particular brew turns out. I never tried to put too much hops in any of these wild beers because of the insane attenuation and the mouth-feel impact a lot hops might impart- its also just a matter of general preference that I seem to prefer "hoppy" beers 15-25 IBUs lower than most other people seem to like the. Perhaps I am a "super taster" for hops, or I just don't care for some of the newer varieties/quantities being used as much as others, I don't really know. For example I would brew your recipe minus the hop back and with half the hops, maybe a little more than half on the finishing side but probably with something like Liberty. Brett. Trois did produce fairly complete attenuation in the 90-95% range on my end, did you have the same experience?
I'm also glad to see people taking such a professional interest in brewing these great beers in our humble but rapidly expanding wild brewing culture State-side. Its certainly of great interest and mighty fun for those of us who are confirmed amateurs such as myself. Sorry about the long winded reply!
I think many of the best ideas and result are born from restrictions and frugality. Sounds like you have quite the brewing method, glad to you are capable of making beers you really enjoy! Having all of that great grain/hops/fruit is a big advantage, hopefully as homebrewing and craft brewing grow there will be more catering to brewers looking for the best ingredients.
This batch only attenuated to about 85%, probably thanks to the moderately high mash temperature and CaraPils. The beer has a firm bitterness, but I don’t think it is excessive. It certainly could use a bit more body, but I wouldn’t call it thin. The flavor has a huge pineapple flavor, really tropical. Hard to tell though exactly what is from the Brett, and what is from the aggressive hopping.
Brett pitching rates are a really interesting topic that hasn’t been well covered or explored. I know Chad Yakobson has been backing down his pitching Rates at Crooked Stave, but so far I’ve been happy pitching on the high end in terms of flavor and fermentation rate. Good luck!
How's the beer doing? Tried my hand at something like this recently, but used largely Nelson and tried to avoid overly tropical hops so that I might be able to better delineate between what the hops and yeast brought.
It is sitting on tap, should be ready to review by next week. It is super tropical (pineapple) in the nose, hard to pinpoint exactly what is from the hops and the yeast.
Good luck on your batch!
How is the chilling set up doing? Curious to hear more about it.
It works pretty well, but with my warm summertime tap water it is a bit of a hassle. I had to replace some fittings to make things easier, but the next time I use the system I'll do a more complete write up.
So I just made an IPA on 9/13 using just the 644 vial with no starter. I had solid fermentation going within 15 hours at 70F. Today(9/17) fermentation had slowed quite a bit and gravity is down to about 1.030 from 1.064. Do you think given another week this should come down quite a bit more?
It should come down a bit, but you really under-pitched the ideal amount of Brett. White Labs packages contain less than 3 billion cells when fresh (pitching more like 150 billion would have been my target). Never pitched one of their Brett packages without a starter or additional yeast, so hard to predict how low it will go. Best of luck!
Big krausen after 24 hrs pitching a 4L starter.
Am I reading your notes right, no 0 min, all hop back?
No, there was both a flame-out addition (labeled 0 min.)and hop-back. If you don't have a hop-back you can do a hop-stand for 20 minutes with the 0 minutes addition and then add the hop-back hops when you start chilling.
Hello Mike!
I'm making a similar beer, 100 % brett with Brux Drie Trois.
I don't have any acidulated malt, but I have food grade lactic acid. Is it a good idea to add some, for the brett to work with? If so, any idea of how much, and when to add it (mash, boil, fermenting)?
Cheers!
Certainly wouldn't hurt, but it would be fine without it. 1/2 tsp would probably be enough. You could add it to the mash if your pH was too high, the sparge, or the boil.
Hi Mike,
I was wondering if you could give me some advice on saving this brew. I saved the dregs of the New Belgium Brett Beer (wasn't able to find out what strain it was). I wasn't sure what to do with it but this 100% brett IPA sounds like an interesting concept. However, I miscalculated the bittering hops (I used Chinnok pellets instead of hop shots) so the bitterness is a little high. I'm down to 1.010 and actually it's not tasting as bad as I'd feared, but do you have ideas on what I might do to counteract the bitterness? If I try to add anything sweet, the Brett will just chew it up, right? So should I treat with metabisulphite first. I have some natural lemon juice from my mother in law and wondered it that might help balance it out. I guess I could blend a small glass to get an idea of what it would taste like. Any input would be appreciated. Thanks!
First off, as far as I have read, the New Belgium Brett Beer was pasteurized (accidentally) on its way to bottles. So I'm not sure what it is that you cultured? I know New Belgium pasteurizes and then re-yeasts with brewer's yeast for many of their sour beers, not sure if that was the case on this one though.
If it is brewer's yeast (how does it taste?) you could add some maltodextrin to add to the sweetness. Acidity actually enhances/replaces bitterness in low levels, and can make for an acrid combination at higher levels. Blending is another viable option, if you have a lower IBU beer (or one with a smoother bitterness) that would pair well.
Hope that helps!
My main reason for believing that it is at least partially Brett yeast is that every step up I have done the activity has been slow. The New Belgium Brett Beer wasn't especially sour so not sure how my beer should taste at this early stage. I racked 2/3rds of it onto some blueberries I had in the freezer. I had not other use for the berries and this beer can't get any worse so I figured I'd put the two together and see what happens. The other 1/3rd I left plain so we'll see if it sours over time.
Certainly could be. Brett on its own really doesn't make much acidity, one of the big misconceptions about what a 100% Brett Beer should taste like.
Let me know how they turns out!
Im going to use this yeast on a MiniIPA that I am doing. I have wanted to do a Brett beer. This 1.032 beer should be a fun little experiment. The flavors that you describe sound awesome! Here is my little experiment... http://www.brewtoad.com/recipes/311-daytime-amber-ipa
Good luck. My only worry on a low gravity 100% Brett beer would be mouthfeel, without the glycerine that ale yeast produces. Let me know how it turns out!
I will! Are you thinking it will be to thin? Im not a Brett genius.
It depends on what you want, it'll be light and bright. I tend to use less attenuative strains in low gravity beers or saison strains, which are high glycerol producers (which adds mouthfeel).
Duly noted. Thank you.
I'm considering brewing my first Brett beer and was wondering about the equipment I use to ferment and dispense from. Should I plan for Brett only fermenter, siphon, kegs, etc? Or is it really just a concern with bacteria infected beers? Do you replace your tap lines once a brett beer keg has kicked?
Thanks!
I didn't always, but now I separate pretty much all of my post-boil equipment. If you don't be very careful about cleaning and sanitizing. I usually pass my old "clean" gear onto my sours when it gets scratched or discolored.
I have a keg in my kegerator that is on a party tap that gets any sour beers I keg. Considering changing that configuration as the tap has a tendency to drip, probably best to avoid having the non-brewer's yeast microbes covering the outside of the kegs. Also FYI, Brett is a yeast, not a bacteria.
Good luck!
Yes, thank you! I guess I'll look into a picnic tap for that keg, or install a perlick tap specifically for brett beers! Thanks for the reply and for a fantastic blog!
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