i am brewing a fruit pale ale on brett. i was originally going to go with peach, but i’m not sure it would come through. i was then thinking apricot and after that thought about raspberry, and now i’m just conflicted. hahaha.
it’s going to be an extract brew with citra, amarillo, and simcoe for the hops. i was going to primary with us-05 and then add the puree and the brett brux in secondary. i’m not sure if this would be considered “proper” procedure and i’m not sure how much puree to use.
which fruit puree and how much would you use? when would you add it?
I can’t really comment on procedure or quantity, but if it were me I’d use the apricot and then dry-hop with Citra and Amarillo in the keg or a week before bottling.
Brett b with a blend of sweet and sour cherries is another option to consider. I did this few years back and the Brett “cherry pie” character matched up well with the cherries.
yeah, those hops would not go with cherry. Mango and or apricot would. I’d dump the hops and go for brett character. Hops and fruit and brett … just too much going on IMO.
I would dump the simcoe. Keep the IBUs low like 20-25 with a neutral bittering hop like magnum or warrior and use the Amarillo and Citra at 10 and/or flamout. Maybe 0.5oz of each at each charge/hop addition? No dry hop. Ferment with a neutral yeast and then add your Brett and fruit (mango or apricot) in the secondary.
I would dump going with any type of pronounced hop character. Personally, I think the cattiness of simcoe would go well if it was light and complemented rather than dominated the beer, but I would consider that in a darker beer and with cherries. OTOH mango and apricot would go with the citra for sure. Amarillo too, maybe. for my tastes this is going to be a challenging balancing game. Just be sure the hops are not dominant for your first round, you can go back and bump the hops up on your next try. That’s my .02.
Now, admittedly, I have only tried Brett b from WL, but I can’t understand for he life of me why WY would be so much different. I’ve always heard that Bruxellensis is the cherry pie Brett.
Ive always heard Brett L is the cherry pie flavor where Brett B is the horse blanket barnyard smell. I recently used Brett B from Wyeast in an Orval clone I did which is about 1 month into sitting on the Brett. I definitely smell the horse blanket coming out of there. Also just racked a 13 month old lambic over 9 lbs of cherries about 6 weeks ago, and I could smell the Cherry pie. That was done with Wyeast Lambic blend, which I understand is Brett B and Brett L.
Orval is one of my favorite beers. Period. I totally get cherry pie from Orval. Do get the horse blanket, too. But the cherry pie is my overall impression.
You will be surprised at how clean a 100% Brett. beer can be. Also, I probably would make a starter if you are using it as the primary yeast. It acts a little like saccromyces when used as the primary yeast. So treat it as such. The ferment just takes a little longer, 3-4 weeks typically. If you want a lot of the barnyard “funk”, I would use it in the secondary.
Me too major! Maybe those flavors are present in both strains of Brett and you get more of one or the other depending on how it was cultured? hmmm…interesting.
+1. You will probably get more Brett character in the secondary after using a primary yeast. I have had some very nice all Brett beers though. But the funk can be surprisingly subdued. In that case might go perfect with what you are proposing (Amarillo, citra, mango, apricot). Now I wanna try it.
The naming of them is somewhat arbitrary and the two different labs chose different names for a similar strain. American Ale vs. California Ale, London ESB vs. English Ale Yeast - they are just names. I know it seems like it should be different with species names, but species names are not as solid with yeasts as some people think. Plus B. lambicus is not a valid species name, scientifically it is classified under and a synonym of B. bruxellensis, just like S. pastorianus and S. carlsbergensis are synonyms.
