The Mixed Fermentation Thread

[JFB]

After having to dump two batches of sour beer due to reading Michael Tonsmeire say 'plastic is fine'. The penny finally dropped that I think he was talking 'PET' I used the Wilco screw top ones.
Just picked this up to go along with my Glass carboy for ageing over 3 months
I think £30 with postage.

 

[JFB]

Picked up these two in Tesco's just now.
The 'Sofie' is a saison . Says flavour develops over five years and contains live yeast. Guessing maybe it's mixed ferm? This was bottled July 17 so that's pretty cool.
The Matilod Brettanomyces a Belgian style ale also bottled in 17 and contains live yeast.
Nice to be able to pick something up with possible dregs Just need to get em chilled now..

 

[matt76]

Hi all, hopefully this is the right place to ask...

I've been brewing now for just over 2 years - I'm sure I've seen many of you about the forum in that time...

To date it's been mainly IPAs, bitters, porters and lagers - I do 10L batches and bottle all my beers, no kegs. But I'm interested in expanding my repertoire and experimenting a bit more. But where do I start?

- I've recently made my first kettle sour - I've had a few sour craft beers, I like them and this is something I'd like to do more of.
- I've also tried a few Belgian beers recently which have opened my eyes to wider possibilities of brewing with brettanomyces (e.g. Orval) and sour beers (e.g. Rodenbach Grand Cru).

N.B. I have no expectation at all to try to clone these Belgian beers! More just to take them as inspiration to go a bit further off piste, experiment and see what happens.

So where to start?
- Is it simply a case of trawling through Milk the Funk?
- James Spencer of Basic Brewing recently made a Golden Ale spiked at bottling with Brett. Could that be an area worth exploring?
- I'm interested in biotransformation of hops - in his book, Josh Weikert points to some Brett strains (among others) as having such properties. Could brett work with more hop forward beers?
- Historically I believe Porters were aged in barrels which we now know contained brettanomyces (or was it lactobacillus? It's been a couple of months since I was reading about it!). Is it worth trying this with my existing porter recipes for example?
- What else to try with regard to sour beers?

Any suggestions would be welcome - I'm in no hurry, if nothing else the last 2 years have taught me to be patient! (Which is just as well if what I've read about aging with brett is anything to go by!)

Cheers,

Matt

 

[JFB]

Sounds like you know what your doing
My advice would be to brew a simple recipe you like, add just a low dose of noble bittering hops.. add a sachet of yeast like Wyeast lambic blend, after two weeks put in a glass or pet secondary.
Then buy American sour beers and or wildbrews and read all about it.
Second brew would be a Brett as your be drinking this before the first

 

[Sadfield]

Easiest place to start is to get a cheap glass demijohn, any size up to 5L. When you come to bottle a brew, fill the demijohn, add some brett and an airlock. Hide it away somewhere for 2-12 months. You don't need many brettanomyces cells, so the dregs from a bottle of Orval will do the trick. You could even add some oak chips or a chunk of oak to replicate the barrel aging.

Bretting stuff is easy, the hardest part is patience, and leaving it to do its thing.

As for brett in Hoppy beers. 100% brett fermented beers actually ferment quite cleanly with fruity aromas, by all accounts and the very few I've tasted. IIRC it behaves differently when the initial wort ph is higher and ferments in a similar timeframe to saccharomyces.

Milkthefunk is an excellent place to start, particularly the section on cleaning/sanitising. It's nothing major, mainly extended contact time with the usual sanitisers and cleaners, but reassuring to know so you don't contaminate clean beers.
Quality Assurance

 

[marshbrewer]

You don't need many brettanomyces cells, so the dregs from a bottle of Orval will do the trick.

Thankyou, thankyou, thankyou.

Last year I obtained some brown 5L demijohns to do some bulk ageing of historic keeping ales (with a view to brewing te running versions after a year or so and blending), and I wanted to do 10L batches, Bret 5L and not Bret the other 5L to see how they aged differently. But I was always thinking that a sachet of commercial bret would be a massive waste in such a small volume. But now I know - enjoy a Orval, and use the dregs!

 

[BeerCat]

Brewing my yearly Flanders red this evening.
I normally use Wyeast or whitelabs for yeast.
Decided I'd mix things up bought a sachet of 'sour batch kidz'.
Thing I didn't realize was that it hasn't any pediococcus..
I normally add about 15 ibu's. So I'll need to wind this down.
Also read it can be ready in six to nine months. I see a few on here have used SBK.
What kind of time scale have people had??

They seem to say six months which is what i did. I went 3 IBU but even that must of been too much as its only mildly sour. I dry hopped and oaked it, next time i wont add any hops until then. Complex though and tastes like its been nicely aged. Lots of fruit.

 

[matt76]

Easiest place to start is to get a cheap glass demijohn, any size up to 5L. When you come to bottle a brew, fill the demijohn, add some brett and an airlock. Hide it away somewhere for 2-12 months. You don't need many brettanomyces cells, so the dregs from a bottle of Orval will do the trick. You could even add some oak chips or a chunk of oak to replicate the barrel aging.

Bretting stuff is easy, the hardest part is patience, and leaving it to do its thing.

As for brett in Hoppy beers. 100% brett fermented beers actually ferment quite cleanly with fruity aromas, by all accounts and the very few I've tasted. IIRC it behaves differently when the initial wort ph is higher and ferments in a similar timeframe to saccharomyces.

Milkthefunk is an excellent place to start, particularly the section on cleaning/sanitising. It's nothing major, mainly extended contact time with the usual sanitisers and cleaners, but reassuring to know so you don't contaminate clean beers.
Quality Assurance

@Sadfield thanks for the tips.

Out of curiosity, you recommend glass because it's easier to sanitise afterwards? As luck would have it I've recently acquired a glass demijohn and airlock :)

And why age in batch like this instead of bottles? Simply because it's easier to add dregs to one vessel, and because less risk of bottle bombs if we don't know how much more the brett will attenuate?

And after aging would you then bottle as normal with priming sugar?

 

[Sadfield]

@Sadfield thanks for the tips.

Out of curiosity, you recommend glass because it's easier to sanitise afterwards? As luck would have it I've recently acquired a glass demijohn and airlock :)

And why age in batch like this instead of bottles? Simply because it's easier to add dregs to one vessel, and because less risk of bottle bombs if we don't know how much more the brett will attenuate?

And after aging would you then bottle as normal with priming sugar?

Both questions are covered by the same answer. It's mainly to do with limiting oxidation. Some plastics allow oxygen to pass through them over time, and bulk batching reduces the ratio between volume and surface area. Particularly, with blends of yeast with bacteria, too much oxygen can lead to more Acetic, vinegar flavours. Stainless steel vessels are good, too, but glass is cheap and you can see what's going on.

Yes, you can bottle as normal, although it's best to add fresh yeast. I use a very small amount of cheap wine yeast. Bulk ageing then priming gives better control over carbonation than bretting in the bottle.

 

[JFB]

They seem to say six months which is what i did. I went 3 IBU but even that must of been too much as its only mildly sour. I dry hopped and oaked it, next time i wont add any hops until then. Complex though and tastes like its been nicely aged. Lots of fruit.

Nice, I went 2.5 ibu's so I'll see how it turns out. I've saved a jar of trub so I'll probably give another one a go in a month or so.
Also felt a bit cheated of not having and pediococcus and being able to add 17 ibu's so bought a pack of Wyeast lambic and pitched that into another red ale last night

 

[BeerCat]

Nice, I went 2.5 ibu's so I'll see how it turns out. I've saved a jar of trub so I'll probably give another one a go in a month or so.
Also felt a bit cheated of not having and pediococcus and being able to add 17 ibu's so bought a pack of Wyeast lambic and pitched that into another red ale last night

I have been making lacto starters. The high cell count can sour a beer after it finishes at 1010. No hops though. Just got the sour weapon pedio but have not tried it yet.

 

[BeerCat]

This is my six month old Flanders. Something to drink while i am waiting for the others. Did not have a lot of flavour after 3 months but there is plenty now. Its continued to mature even in the cold of my garage which is handy as i have run out of space. I have one of the fermonsters like you JFB and some pet demijohns but this was fermemted in a wine bucket.

 

[Sadfield]

Have just mashed in my next mixed fermentation brew, it's an amalgamation of a couple of 1868 Wm. Younger Stock Ale recipes, which will be primary fermented with Sacchromyces, then racked to a corny keg with some dry hops and oak chunks that are home to Brett C. It'll be the fifth time I've used these oak chunks since the initial batch that was pitched with a vial of WLP645. Its a great way of storing and transferring Brettanomyces from one brew to the next.

The recipe is 5Kg Chevallier malt, mashed at 66C for 90 Minutes. 20L Batch.
OG1.062. 6.5% Abv before Bretting. 60 IBUs.

90minute boil with:
First Gold (37.5g) - 35 IBUs @ First Wort.
Styrian Goldings (40g) - 15 IBUs @ 60 Minutes
Saaz (10g) & Hersbrucker (42.5g) - 10 IBUs @ 30 Minutes

I'm using a 50/50 pitch of Liberty Bell and S-33.

Aged for a year with 45g Saaz dry hop, and Oak chunks to replicate the barrel aging process of the 1800's.

 

[JFB]

It'll be the fifth time I've used these oak chunks since the initial batch that was pitched with a vial of WLP645. Its a great way of storing and transferring Brettanomyces from one brew to the next.

How do you store the chunks between brews?
Or are they always on the go??

 

[Sadfield]

How do you store the chunks between brews?
Or are they always on the go??

I just give them a rinse off, then leave them to air dry on some kitchen roll and then store them in a plastic bag. Brettanomyces can penetrate deep into wood, up to 8mm.

 

[JFB]

Nice, I had some of the malt miller barrel chunks.
The beer turned out awful so rather than risk using them again they went in the BBQ
I've just bought the black swan drilled things from MM.
Probably a bit of a rip off but going to give em a go. There a lot smaller than I thought.

 

[marshbrewer]

Aged for a year with 45g Saaz dry hop, and Oak chunks to replicate the barrel aging process of the 1800's.

Will you leave the dry hops in for the full year, @Sadfield ? The keeping recipe I want to try has a dry hop addition, and was wondering when to add it / remove it, if you see what I mean.

 

[matt76]

I just give them a rinse off, then leave them to air dry on some kitchen roll and then store them in a plastic bag. Brettanomyces can penetrate deep into wood, up to 8mm.

Out of interest, do you think you get anything from the oak itself?

I appreciate that historically, wooden barrels used for aging contained brettanomyces.

I'm still interested to try something like this with a porter. After I mentioned it the other day I went back and checked Cornell's "Amber, Gold & Black" who suggests Porter was aged in barrels containing brettanomyces and also lactobacillus and pediococcus. But the resulting aged porter was blended with young beer at the time of serving (a bit like Lambic), which makes me wonder if that's actually the real trick???

 

[Sadfield]

@jjsh Yes, they'll be in for the year. I did this before on the historic IPA I brewed, based on the info I got from Ron Pattinson regarding dry hopping. Which was, 8 - 16 oz per barrel dry hops, 12 months in the barrel. A barrel being 36 imperial gallons.

 

[JFB]

I'm still interested to try something like this with a porter. After I mentioned it the other day I went back and checked Cornell's "Amber, Gold & Black" who suggests Porter was aged in barrels containing brettanomyces and also lactobacillus and pediococcus. But the resulting aged porter was blended with young beer at the time of serving (a bit like Lambic), which makes me wonder if that's actually the real trick???

Sound very similar to a Flanders brown ale.
Sometimes we mix and sour and a fresh beer in the glass at home.
Had some nice combo's.