Hill Farmstead’s Wheat is the New Hops & Crooked Stave’s Hop Savant are two excellent examples of what happens when you brew a double IPA then ferment with Brettanomyces. Most home brewers brew IPAs more than any other style so you can take your favorite recipe and simply switch ale yeast for Brett. Really easy.
Brett has a tendency to move slowly so I recommend a 2 litre starter to get those bugs really going, pitch and ferment warm (around 70F) and you’ll have near full attenuation within 14 days. I let mine go 21 days and then transferred to the keg. Brett keeps working for many months later but this is also a very hoppy beer so you take 2 routes. You can tap it now and drink a deliciously fruity, spicy and funky IPA or you can wait 6 months, let the hops fade a bit and allow the keg to carbonate on its own (keg condition) and get a more esther funk forward pale ale. I’ve done both and personally prefer waiting a while.
The reason I’m writing this is because I took 2 gallons of a batch brewed last April (1 year ago) and kept it in the keg and what I got was a beautiful keg carbonated bitter beer lots of fruit, leather and rye spice w/ a little bit of peppercorn taste. Still bitter enough with no cheesy taste at all. The mouthfeel is amazing being naturally carbonated producing a 3 finger fluffy white head.
The recipe is below except use WLP645 instead of ale yeast. I really think the results are astonishing.
Here’s a picture of that beer brewed a year ago. Gorgeous!
That sounds like some good stuff Adam. What was the gravity after keg conditioning? 1.020 seems high for Brett, even given the high OG.
I’ve worked with Trois so far only for about 5 batches now and notice it is very Belgian-y in the phenols and tropical fruit with light malts but works very different with darker malts, much cleaner, phenols seem a lot more subdued. Just kegged a Dubbel (1.067 OG) brewed with Trois and it took quite a while (3.5 weeks) to hit FG in single digits with a 2L starter, but the end result is fantastic.. very authentic dubbel tasting. At this point you’d never know it was fermented with Brett.. 2-3 months from now will be a different story.
The versatility of Brett is just as impressive as Saccharomyces.. Given it’s sought after profile, aggressiveness to out-compete unwanted pathogens, and versatility as funky or clean strains, I think we will see more breweries like Crooked Stave popping up that use primarily Brett to make their beers. Should be interesting.
1.020 was the estimated FG for the california ale yeast. This one finished pretty low at 1.007 or at least that’s the gravity as it went into the keg. I should measure it now that it’s been a year…probably much lower.
A Dubbel w/ brett sounds nice right now. Lots of Orval clones out there that it’s tempting to grab the grain and go for it. 3 weeks sounds about right for single-digit gravity. I love the fruitiness of the beer beyond the normal Citra taste.