Brett Strain Guide

Brandon at EmbraceTheFunk.com and I have put together this Guide for all of the brett strains we know of out there.  As new strains come out, we will be updating the list.  A big thank you to Al Buck at East Coast Yeast for helping with much of the taxonomy and history of the strains.



Hopefully this helps clear the confusion out there about the different strains and their relationship to each other.

Cider Fermentation Panel: Tasting

I met with the guys at Leidel's orchard agian last weekend to check in on the wild cider fermentation experiments.  We took gravity readings and sampled each batch.  Here are the results:

1. Brett drie (BSI) - 1.000
   - orange peal, citrus, tropical fruit, pineapple, tingling feeling on the sides of the tongue. 
2. Brett custersianus - 0.999
   - lemonade like citrus, cherry, white wine, flavor not intense, but pleasant.  slightly watery.
3. Brett nanus - 0.998
   - overripe/rotting fruit, cheesy, not pleasant. 
4. Brett lambicus (wyeast) - 0.995
   - grassy/woody, watery flavor, tingly.
5. Brett bruxellensis (wyeast) - 0.999
   - hay and floral funk with sweet nectarine. 
6. Brett claussenii (WL) - 0.998
   - light citrus, watery, yeasty.
7. Brett fantome (ECY) - 0.998
   - hay funk, green apple tartness, tingly.
8. Saccharomyces paradoxus - 0.998
   - buttery Chardonnay, candy sweetness.
9. Brett blend (drie, claussenii, fantome, ECY05) - 0.998
   - light citrus
10. Brett blend and oenococcus - 0.995
    - as compared to #9, less tart and more alcoholic.  less flavor.  watery.
11. Brett blend with maltodextrin addition - 0.996
    - as compared to #9, smooth/creamy feel and more flavorful.

We didn't bottle as this was the only gravity reading I have and don't know what the FG will be for any of these.  Normally you might think 1.000 is a safe number, but having batches at 0.995 makes me cautious.

The base cider we used was intentionally a neutral and lacking flavor.  This allowed us to more easily pick out the flavor of the yeast only.  As you can see from the Brett fantome batch, we could taste a green apple flavor and know that it wasn't from the base cider, but rather the yeast.   So while this was beneficial, I think its important to note that the base cider wasn't very flavorful and led to some batches tasting "watery".  This might be better stated "the yeast strain didn't produce a very large amount of flavor".  With a different base cider blend, these may still be viable strains for producing tasty cider.

It was very interesting to feel this tingling sensation on the sides of my tongue from some batches.  I have no idea what that is and have never experienced it before.  Future batches are required to see if this is something brett does in cider.

Batches #10 and #11 are worth talking about more.  While we were experiencing some palette fatigue, it was easy to compare them against #9 and see the impact from the addition of oenococcus and maltodextrin in cider.  Quite simply, oenococcus wrecked the brett fermentation while maltodextrin enhanced it.  I was skeptical that maltodextrin would do anything as I knew the brett would eat it away, but it does seem to have helped both the mouthfeel and the flavor.

The favorite batches were drie, custersianus, bruxellensis, fantome and paradoxus.  I already feel like I want to revisit some of these strains, so I am going to hold off final judgement until I taste these a few times.  Also, I'm looking forward to tasting them once carbonated, but it will be a few weeks before I have another chance to get up there and bottle.

Foraged Farmhouse

Its been nearly 10 months since I started the "minimalist lambic".  I've tasted it here and there, and unsurprisingly the beer is fairly simple.  The main flavors I get from it are barnyard funk, bitterness, and lemon rind acidity.  The barnyard flavor isn't the horse-blanket funk, but rather a softer more earthy/floral barnyard.  It reminds me more of the funk you get from brett farmhouse beers.

With that in mind, I had decided that I should run with the earthy/floral flavor and add some dandelions.  Its not my personal favorite, but thought it could add some complexity and make a nice summer sour beer for my wife.  When I went out to pick some dandelions, I noticed maple flowers blooming above me.  I had been told just the night before that these are edible, so I decided to try some.  Turns out they are pretty good.  I picked two varieties; Sugar Maple and Norway Maple.  Ironically, the Norway Maple flowers are much sweeter than the Sugar Maple's.

Sugar Maple flowers.

Norway Maple flowers.

Eating them raw is fine, but I had no idea how they would translate into a beer.  I decided to take a pinch of each and make a tea with them to get an idea of how strong the flavors would be.

Teas made with maple flowers and dandelions.

I found I preferred the flavor of the Norway maple flowers the most, but they both make pretty good tea.  I sorted out and added about 2 cups of Norway maple flowers, 1 cup of Sugar maple flowers.  The dandelion tea seemed to be a bit vegetal, which I attributed to the green bottom of the flower, so cut that part off of each and added 1/2 cup of dandelion flowers (petals?).

Bowl of ingredients ready to be added to the beer.

I also decided to add 4oz (~1 cup) of dried cranberries.  I'm not looking to pick up cranberry flavor in the end, but rather just a soft fruity note.  Also I thought it would help the color of the beer.

I'm thinking I'll give these about a month to infuse with the beer and then it'll be ready for bottling.  With any luck, it will be a nice summer beer.

Cider Keeve: Day 123

This last weekend was the 4 month mark of the Cider Keeve.  I have checked in on this experiment at the 1 month and 2 month mark.  Here is a re-cap what is going on and what has happened, but you can go back and read those previous posts.

Keeving is an old world cider practice that removes nutrients from the cider.  During fermentation, the yeast runs out of nutrients and dies before it can eat all the sugar, resulting in a sweet cider.  The experiment I am doing is seeing what happens when you use a lambic blend of yeast to ferment the keeved cider and if this nutrient poor environment would allow me to mimic the typical lambic fermentation process in cider.  At month 1, I took a gravity reading and saw the fermentation tracking a slow fermentation characteristic of keeved cider.  This indicated that the yeast was fermenting in a nutrient poor environment, but still left the question open as to what would happen when the nutrients ran out.  Would the Brett continue to ferment or would it die along with the Saccharo?  At month 2, I took another gravity reading and the fermentation was still on track.  There seemed to be some Brett character when smelling the cider, but not much when tasting it.  This indicated that there was at least some Brett activity in tandem with the Saccharo fermentation, but I still didn't know if it would continue fermenting and reach 1.000 or if the Brett would die out.

On Friday evening I had some friends over and decided to check in on it with them.  Upon tasting, it was very clear that the Brett had continued on because there was an big earthy, barnyard flavor and aroma.  The gravity reading was 1.000.  Normally this would mean a thin body, which I feared, but to my surprise there was still plenty of body.  I am going to give this some more time to see how it continues to develop.  It seems like the Brett Brux dominated the other strains, so I'd like to see if any of the other strains will do anything in the next couple months.  I'll likely bottle this around the 6-9 month mark.

I'm very excited about this brew.  Its a whole new style of cider, and I really like the results.  I'm hoping we will do a larger batch this coming fall and ferment it in oak barrels (possibly ones previously used for lambic?).  I'll definitely be using East Coast Yeast next time instead of the Wyeast lambic blend smack pack. The Wyeast lambic blend is fine and served its purpose for this experiment, but I much prefer the flavor profile that results from ECY yeast blend.  It would also be fun to tweak the apple variety blend that goes into the press.

Cider Fermentation Panel: Yeast Pitched

Over the weekend I met with the guys at Leidel's Orchard to do our brett cider experiment.  The yeast arrived safely, the juice was ready, and they had purchased all the carboys/bungs/airlocks needed.

Wild yeast strains from East Coast Yeast

After we sanitized everything, we filled each carboy with 3 gallons of juice.  To ensure that our pitched yeast would be the source of 100% of the fermentation, the juice had been pasteurized at the pack house and then shipped to us frozen.  While we were waiting for the juice to warm up to room temperature, I dissolved 5 ounces of maltodextrin into some juice, and then added it to the juice already in carboy #11. (batch list here)

11 wild cider batches

Later that evening the yeast was added.  The only yeast strain that didn't come from East Coast Yeast was the B. Brux, which came from Wyeast.  24 hours after pitching every carboy except #5 (Brux) was in active fermentation.  #3 (Nanus), #7 (Fantome), and the brett blend batches were the most active.  Giving them a slight shake would almost blow out all the star-san solution in the airlock!

They will be left in that room, which is a steady 60 degrees, for the next month or two.  Unfortunately, the orchard is 2.5 hours from where I live, so I won't be able to check on it regularly, or take weekly gravity readings.  The goal of this experiment is primarily to see the flavor/aroma contribution of each of these strains and to find which ones we like in cider.

Cider Fermentation Panel

As I've mentioned in previous posts, I've been working with Leidel's Apple Orchard on a few hard cider pilot batches.  The past experiments have been more complicated, expensive, time consuming fermentation styles.  We now want to see if we could come up with a "table cider"; something that doesn't require oak barrels nor take 9+ months to ferment and age.

After giving some thought to the different kinds of ciders out there and how we could make something new and interesting, I got the idea of doing a 100% brett fermented cider.  Surprisingly, there is very little information out there on how brett (in general and individual strains) performs in cider.  Even in the homebrew world there are only a few people who have tried 100% brett fermentation for cider.  Most commercial cider operations (and a lot of home brewers) come at cider from the wine world, which hates brett, and so they refuse to even consider it.  So, coming from the beer world, specifically the "wild" beer world, it seems I have a fresh look at the possibilities.

First, we need to get an understanding of how each individual strain of brett performs and the flavors/aromas it creates in cider.  I would also like to get an idea of how brett performs when paired with a malolactic fermentation.  Apple juice has malic acid, which is a harsher acid.  Oenococcus can be used to convert the malic acid to the softer lactic acid.  In addition, I would like to see the impact of adding maltodextrines to a 100% brett cider fermentation.  Maltodextrins are complex sugars that normal brewing yeast is not able to break down and consume, leaving the beer with a fuller body and mouthfeel.  Theoretically brett has the ability to break these complex sugars down, but some home brewers have reported a difference in using maltodextrin with brett fermentation.

We decided to do test batch for all of the individual brett strains possible.  Once again I reached out to Al Buck at East Coast Yeast, who has been so helpful in the past, to supply the yeast.  In addition to providing the brett strains, he recommended a "wild" saccharomyces strain call S. Paradoxus.  I am particularly excited about this as it has the ability to do a partial malolactic fermentation on its own.

So here is the list of the 3 gallon batches we will be starting this weekend:

1. Brett drie (BSI)
2. Brett custersianus
3. Brett nanus
4. Brett lambicus (wyeast)
5. Brett bruxellensis (wyeast)
6. Brett claussenii (WL)
7. Brett fantome (ECY)
8. Saccharomyces paradoxus
9. Brett blend (drie, claussenii, fantome, ECY05)
10. Brett blend and oenococcus
11. Brett blend with maltodextrin addition

I'm really looking forward to this experiment.  I expect it to take a month or two to finish fermentation, but I will make sure to report the results here as soon as I have them.

Cider Keeve: Day 62

This weekend is the 2 month mark for the Cider Keeve so I wanted to check in on it, get a gravity reading, and see how it tastes/smells.  As I mentioned last time, I was anticipating a gravity of ~1.010, and at 1.008 it is going right as I hoped.

Keeved Cider at 2 months.

Now for the big question; how does it smell and taste?  To be honest, it was very hard to judge and the smell/flavor was not like any cider I've had.  The smell had this earthy, floral, and licorice combination with a hint of honey and apple skin.  It reminded me of a mead.  When I drank it, the flavor and body made me think I was drinking a mead or a wine.  My wife said it reminded her a lot of Chardonnay.  There was also a strawberry flavor and a slight tannin note.  It had a very nice tartness; not too sharp, but still pronounced.  At it's current gravity, I find it slightly thick, although if it were carbonated, it might be nice.

My biggest hope in checking in on the cider at this point was to see if the Brett was working in tandem to the Saccharo.  Based on the aroma, I would say yes.  However, it didn't translate much into the flavor...at least not at this point.  So I can't really say definitely if the Brett has been playing an active role or not.  I think it is on track for a keeve fermentation, and will just require some more time to see how flavors develop.

Since we were down checking on this, I decided to check on the Minimalist Lambic, which has been fermenting for over 7 months.  Gravity, as expected, is 1.000.  It smells pungent of typical lambic aroma.  Mostly grassy and barnyard funk.  Some hops and a slight phenol.  The taste was very interesting.  It has a very big funky/earthy/grassy flavor, but then has this lingering void, and then a hop bitterness.  The sourness is there, but not that high.  What is interesting is that its hard to call it "watery" or "one-noted", but it is definitely lacking complexity.  This isn't much of a surprise considering it is fermented with a single Brett strain where lambic traditionally has many many strains.