[majorvices]

I brewed 35 gallons of a 1.068 beer yesterday. 55 lbs Best Pils, 25 lbs Best Vienna, 10 lbs FrancoBelges cara vienne. Bittered with Magnum and Tettnanger at 10 minutes. I plan to dry hop with Tettnanger as well.

I have a single barrel pitch of Brett Brux. I've done a lot of brett aging beers, but never a beer fermented on brett as primary yeast. I know it can be a lot cleaner than expected. I'm planning on not aerating when I pitch today to try to get as much brett character as I can. But what can I expect? How long does fermentation take? I am planning on fermenting in my "barrel room" which stays a constant 60 degrees, or should it be warmer? How long will the lag be? Anything other bits of advice from those who have done this before would be much appreciated.

[klickitat jim]

Which brett?

[majorvices]

I have a single barrel pitch of Brett Brux.

[klickitat jim]

Duh... too early. I haven't done brett only. The ones ive tried that were clean were not brett b. I do my brett L at 68º. You might take a look at this http://www.brettanomycesproject.com/ lots of good info on how brett behaves and such. I think he was seeing brett b finish fermentation in 6 weeks at 70 IIRC. That doesnt account for flavor changes over time though, just hitting TG.

[erockrph]

While I have no personal experience with an all-Brett beer, I have read/heard from several sour brewers that they ferment Brett at warm ale temps (68-72F). I think many wild beer brewers have come to the conclusion that the typical "Brett" character tends to come about from a primary Sacc fermentation that produces esters and phenolics that the Brett can convert into other flavor compounds. This explains why Brett-primary fermentations turn out so clean - they don't have much to work on to produce Bretty flavor compounds.

[reverseapachemaster]

You aren't going to get the usual brett funk out of a brett primary. Instead you'll get a pile of fruity esters. It won't be over the top estery like a Belgian strain and it can be a different set of fruit flavors. With enough age the beer will start to develop the leather/earthy brett character you are familiar with. What you won't see is much in the way of phenolics because brett lacks the ability to develop a significant volume of the precursors necessary to form those flavor compounds. It needs sacc to make those precursors in meaningful volumes. 

Like most expressive yeast strains, aeration and temperature will play a role in the fermentation character. I'd do some aeration and ferment closer to 70F and possibly think about fermenting even warmer. With your pitching rate and a little oxygen you should see fermentation start in max two days but probably just as fast as a regular sacc fermentation and generally fermentation will end about the same time as a sacc fermentation. There is some disagreement whether all brett beers reach terminal gravity after the typical sacc fermentation schedule or if there is a long and slow tail before FG is reached that stretches fermentation out to 1-2 months. Both Cilurzo and Yakobson agree that there is some extended fermentation but you'll probably see around a 1P drop. Maybe you account for that during packaging or let it ride out in a tank until that happens.

[majorvices]

Well, I didn't aerate and I'm too paranoid to put my diffusion stone in the beer now so I'll just let it ride and see what happens. Thanks for the feedback.

[majorvices]

No sign of fermementation on day 4. It was a $100 pitch of yeast. Guess I need to warm it up into the high 70s.

[reverseapachemaster]

Do you know how much yeast came in the 1BBL starter for brett? My concern is that the lab produced a 1BBL pitch for brett in secondary which would be far less than what you want for primary fermentation.