This brew of the month is a special two-part edition. In this recipe, I combined two of my favorite things: big Brett character and bold fruity hops. Be forewarned that Brett will nest in most of your plastic equipment and is notorious for cross contamination. Keep your equipment clean and separate unless you really like Brettanomyces.
To get the ball rolling, this was initially an eleven-gallon batch. I used a base of pilsner malt with smaller additions of carahell and aromatic. These malts contribute significant complexity and backbone without becoming overwhelming. I wanted to keep it simple with the grain as to not take away from the focus of the recipe.
The hop schedule on this beer is also simple but quite aggressive for the style. While it comes in between 30 and 40 IBUs, the IBUs are more geared towards flavor and aroma. For all-grain, I used half an ounce of Columbus at 60 minutes, half an ounce of Centennial at 30 and one ounce each of Mosaic and Nelson Sauvin at 10 minutes. This combination proved to be very efficient at giving a big hoppy punch. If you are doing a half-size boil for extract and topping up with water at the end, be sure to double the 60 and 30 minute additions due to the lowered hop utilization from the highly-concentrated wort.
Experimenting with homebrew is still one of my favorite things. I made 11 gallons of wort so this beer could be split into 2 fermenters with 5.5 gallons in each. Both were fermented warm (around 75 degrees) using the Wyeast’s 3711 French Saison and after a week transferred into glass carboys. Each carboy received a dose of a different strain of Brettanomyces and sat for just shy of 3 months. Generally, Brett works slower than brewer’s yeast which is why I did the long conditioning in secondary. I selected bruxellensis and claussenii.
To keep it short and sweet, Brett is the weird second cousin twice removed from brewer’s yeast. It ferments sugars but at a slower pace, will even consume long chain sugars that brewer’s yeast can't, and will work well under different environments. As mentioned before, it is notoriously hard to kill. After the world ends it will be full of cockroaches, Twinkies and Brett.
This beer turned out very dry. The French saison yeast does a great job of attenuating by itself but the Brett made these beers bone dry. The bruxellensis produced more classic Brett flavors like barnyard and funk while which made for a nice contrast with the hops. Overall it was very refreshing and fruity. The claussenii created a very different beer. The hops and Brett worked together swimmingly to create a perfect storm of over ripened tropical fruit with a big citrus kick.
This was a great recipe if you have open carboys and patience. This brew of the month is out of place for February but you can thank me when you are grilling on the porch in June with a bright hoppy Brett-saison.
As always I love to encourage people to put their own twists on recipes. Don’t want to pay for expensive yeast twice? Try the WLP644 Sachromyces “Bruxellensis” Trois or one of our great new Omega products like the C2C American Farmhouse. Make it your own. Brew on.
11-Gallon Extract Version ($79.36)
- 18lbs Pilsen Light LME
- 1lb cara hell
- .75lb aromatic
- 1oz Columbus
- 1oz Centennial
- 1oz Mosiac
- 1oz Nelson Sauvin
- Wyeast 3711 French Saison
- WLP645/WLP650
11-Gallon All-grain ($57.13)
- 21lbs Pilsner Malt
- 1lb Carahell
- .75lb aromatic
- 1oz Columbus
- 1oz Centennial
- 1oz Mosiac
- 1oz Nelson Sauvin
- Wyeast 3711 French Saison
- WLP645/WLP650
The staff at Siciliano's is always eager to answer your homebrewing questions. Stop by for help developing custom-made recipes like this one!
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