Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Dreg Series: Baby Black Butte

This is a continuing series on harvesting yeast from production beers.  The focus of this is to collect, grow and ferment a beer with these Brett or wild yeast strains.  The majority of the wort for this experiment is collected by brewing 7 gallons instead of the typical 6 during a normal Homebrew session.  Each of these post will develop slowly as the Brett/Funk matures over time.

Base Recipe: Black Butte Coffee

Production Beer Harvested (Dregs): Sierra Nevada Brux (Russian River)

Sierra Nevada Brux
Brux was made to be aged, as released, the beer lacked complexity and character.  With the addition of Brett Brux it should continue to age over time, adding sour notes and more farmhouse characters.  This will be the 1st time I've added the Brux dregs into a beer.  I've had a starter going for around 4 months, adding to it every 3 weeks or so.  Brett has a tendency to grow very slowly, requiring this very long build up time.  Right now the wort taste very similar to the original beer. 

2 comments:

  1. I was curious about the yeast in this beer so I decided to email Vinnie. He got back to me quickly with the following:

    "Thanks for the email and kind words. Brux was primary fermented with French Saison 3711 from Wyeast and bottle conditioned with T-58 dry beer yeast and Brett Brux yeast from Wyeast at a rate of 100K cells of Brux and 900K cells of the T-58. The most important part is the Brett Brux from Wyeast which is a commercial strain.

    Good luck!

    Vinnie Cilurzo"

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    Replies
    1. It's funny, after I posted this, I listened to the Sunday Session from this week. Someone read the same email from Vinnie. I guess somebody asked this same question a couple of weeks ago and they were following up. He went on to say that if they do this beer again, they would not use the T-58 again.

      Also as it happens in Homebrewing, I pitched the incorrect yeast flask into this beer. I ended up dumping about 200ml of the Flanders Red slurry into the gallon. The Brux is still untouched, safe for another day.

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Thanks for Commenting, Prost!