Adding Brett to an Imperial Stout

General Homebrew Discussion
1

Hello all,

Looking for some seasoned advice, and apologize for lengthy description.

I made a very heavy 1.125 OG Imperial stout that peetered out around 1.030. It is pretty good, but a little heavy, hit or miss in competitions…big range ot scores.

Thus I bottled the remainder and have a gallon or so in 12 oz bottles. I would like to referment with Brett (i have patience) and let it age…

My question is…should I purge a small keg, add the brett, and open the bottles and dump slowly into that?I do not want bottle bombs if I dose individual bottles, for there are too much fermentables for that.

Anyone have something like this they have done? I want to make a good beer INCREDIBLE.

1 Like
2

Ohhh #Following this one as would love to see suggestions on the best technique. Happy stout conditioning.

3

I’ve never done anything quite like this, but I have done a few batches where I transferred from the fermenter into kegs with fruit and added a Brett culture at the same time. I then let the batch age with a spunding valve or an airlock on the gas-in post to relieve pressure for several months.

I think the tricky bit will be getting it out of the bottles into the keg without introducing excessive oxygen.

4

When filling a keg I like to have CO² going in to keg at ~ 5psi. I think this is reducing O² uptake.

2 Likes
5

Dumping the bottles into the keg will unfortunately expose the beer to oxygen but there are some options to minimize the issue.

If you have a carbonation stone, you can pump in CO2 and try to push out the air that made its way into the beer. Similarly, I would top up the keg with CO2 and vent a few times to try to get as much air out.

I would also add a small amount of priming sugar solution to the keg before adding the bottles. A simple sugar will allow the sacc from the stout and the brett to more quickly consume sugar and uptake oxygen in solution. Brett is slow to move especially with those more complex sugars left behind.

I wouldn’t agonize over this too much. If you’re fermenting in a keg and keeping an airlock filled at all times, you’re not going to get a lot of oxygen permeating the vessel during aging which offsets what would happen if you aged the beer in wood, plastic, or even glass.

6

You could do the fill with sanitizer and push it out with CO2 route, too.

That’s a good idea, too. This is purely anecdotal, but I’ve had bottle conditioned beers last for months to years with minimal O2 prevention.

A little bit of oxidation isn’t necessarily a bad thing for an aged beer. Barrels aren’t perfectly impermeable either.