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Brett: friend or foe?

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  • Brett: friend or foe?

    I'm thinking about doing some beers using Brett either by itself or in conjunction with saccharomyces. Given that I'm fairly comfortable brewing with multiple strains of yeast already, I'm wondering if I need to be particularly concerned with Brett...I mean its yeast. If I'm not worrying about using hefeweizen yeast strains alongside american or british yeast in the pub, do I really need to get worked up about brett? or am I being naive?

  • #2
    Go for it

    If you have good SOPs, then bully for you. Yum.

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    • #3
      Go for it, but...

      We are very similiar to you, use a bunch of different yeast stains. We now have a brett & lacto program going on with no problems. We do hower use seperate colored gaskets, hoses, clamps, kegs, and only handle the wild ales at the end of the day. Just to be safe!

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      • #4
        wild

        Be careful amigo. As far as I can remember, some wild yeasts ferment and ferment and keep on fermenting. I've never used Brett but I would look into its attenuation. Ok a Weizen yeast next to a Lager, no problem, but what if the wild yeast gets a foothold and your attenuation on regular beers goes through the roof? Can you say thin tasting?

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        • #5
          The tenacity of Brett. has been overstated. We bottle everything we do with Brett. Brux. and or Brett. Lambicus and it doesn't always take. No cross-over to the fermenters, which are open top wine fermenters. Not the all powerful all consuming beast it's been made out to be. Just to be safe, I do yeast wash with chlorine dioxide.

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          • #6
            My limited experience with Brett leads me to agree with Capt. Bob (who makes some excellent wild beers). In a pub environment, a small contamination is pretty unlikely to take superattenuative hold over a batch, and even if it does, that's probably a long-haul scenario. As for washing with chlorine dioxide, I'm surprised that does anything to to the Brett that it doesn't also do to your primary yeast.

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            • #7
              I'd like to bump this thread... I'd like to start doing large scale brett fermentations (we currently reserve all wild brews for our grundys). We too currently use multiple yeast strains throughout the brew week and I can't see how with good sanitation that there would be any issue. But my paranoia is strong... what say?

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              • #8
                I've used brett a few times (all brett IPA, English IPA aged with brett, in sours, etc) and haven't had any issues of cross contamination.
                We bottle our sour and brett beers with the same bottling gun we use for everything else, just sure to give it a good, thorough cleaning when done.

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                • #9
                  Handle with care

                  For some great Brett resources I would check out Chad Yakobson. He wrote his dissertaion on Brettanomyces and has given a number of great presentations over the years on the subject. You can get the dissertation here (http://brettanomycesproject.com/) and if you Google it more will come up.

                  On the whole, as he says, Brett is not a superbug. Good sanitary practices should keep it under control, like it would any wild yeast or contaminating bacteria.

                  As Capt. Bob points out, yeast still need to have the right conditions to ferment, Brett is no different and so it's not going to magically turn your beer into foamy stinkers. However, it's pretty resourceful and can eek out an existence on a diet that would starve Sacc. so caution is warranted.

                  That said, the negative impact of a contamination issue can be great. The flavor/aroma impact can be severe and the possibility of over-attenuation in packaged beer can present safety as well as quality issues. Imagine sampling your nice estery E

                  If you have good practices, are not bottling beer, and are working at a scale where you can keep an eye on all of your beer, it can be very low risk. If you do bottle beer and send it further from home, there's a little more risk there in the instance if good practices were to break down at some point.

                  We've successfully used many varied yeast strains in our production side-by-side: American, English, Weiss, Saison, an old continental Belgian strain or two. Saison and Belgian strains themselves carry some risks due to their higher attenuation and assertive flavor/aroma profile. In our brewpub we've also used mixed-culture fermentations alongside our standard processes. We segregate equipment in those cases, but to-date good SOPs have been effective.

                  I would recommend developing some micro-biological testing if you haven't already. Yakobson has some great info on good media that can be used to culture - and thus also detect - Brett. I would use those methods to monitor your yeast cultures and packaged beer. You can use various yeast-growth media and large-colony morphology to try to ID your yeast cultures so that you can verify your cultures are homogeneous. Knowing how your different strains, including Brett, perform on media and with attenuation limit testing can keep you ahead of the game before a small issue become a large issue.

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