[morticaixavier]

Could be more experimental but it might be fun.

A couple weeks ago I brewed a 40 liter batch of farmhouse ale with malted rye and wheat. I had two different yeast cultures I grew up from dregs, one from the Prairie Ales 'merica saison and one from Mystic brewing Saison Renaud. Tonight I am going to take my first gravity sample and taste.

In my research I discovered that the Prairie yeast is actually a strain of wine yeast and two strains of brett. and I think that's brilliant. What I am hopeing is that it will allow for a low gravity table strength Saison (mines ~1.048) but because the wine yeast will be poor at fermenting malt sugars the brett will still have plenty of stuff to work with.

Anyway, I was just thinking about it and thought I would share. I'll update tomorrow or later tonight.

[Mark G]

Can't wait to hear how it turns out for you. I did a similar experiment where I did the primary fermentation with wine yeast (K1V-1116), then added Brett after the wine yeast finished. Half got Brett C, half got Brett B Trois. The idea was that the wine yeast would leave more for the Brett to work on than a beer yeast, resulting in a more intense Brett character. I don't have exact notes in front of me, but the numbers indicated it worked, with the wine yeast finishing around 1.020 and the Brett taking it down to the low single digits. Surprisingly though, the Brett character was pretty subdued. And despite the low finishing gravity, the beer didn't have a very dry finishing impression. My hypothesis is that the Brett fermentation, with that much sugar to work with, behaved a little more like an all-Brett primary fermentation, where you don't get the same Brett character. I also think the wine yeast is leaving something behind (esters, sugars, etc.) that takes away from the dry finish I wanted. Anyway, I think I need to experiment more with different wine yeasts and Brett strains to see if I can get closer to what I was looking for.

[mugwort]

Could be more experimental but it might be fun.

A couple weeks ago I brewed a 40 liter batch of farmhouse ale with malted rye and wheat. I had two different yeast cultures I grew up from dregs, one from the Prairie Ales 'merica saison and one from Mystic brewing Saison Renaud. Tonight I am going to take my first gravity sample and taste.

In my research I discovered that the Prairie yeast is actually a strain of wine yeast and two strains of brett. and I think that's brilliant. What I am hopeing is that it will allow for a low gravity table strength Saison (mines ~1.048) but because the wine yeast will be poor at fermenting malt sugars the brett will still have plenty of stuff to work with.

Anyway, I was just thinking about it and thought I would share. I'll update tomorrow or later tonight.

Congrats on your NOBC BOS bugs & cherries win!  What all went into fermenting that batch?

As for this post, I too am interested in the results of this experiment, especially how much Brett character shows up.

[morticaixavier]

Congrats on your NOBC BOS bugs & cherries win!  What all went into fermenting that batch?

As for this post, I too am interested in the results of this experiment, especially how much Brett character shows up.

Thanks! I actually just posted the recipe in the wiki here. http://wiki.homebrewersassociation.org/BugsAndCherries

Did a tasting tonight of the two brews. They are just under 2 weeks old at this point so it's pretty early days yet.

The saison Renaud is still fairly sweet, read 6.6 brix on the refractometer which works out to 3.4 or so if I am using the refractometer correction tool in beersmith. I don't actually have a hydrometer at the moment so I can't verify. The 'Merica reads 5.4 or 1.3 after adjustment. Not a lot of bretty character yet but a much drier impression than the Renaud. Gonna give them both another 3 days- week and check again.