Monday, September 2, 2013

The Great Brett Yeast Experiment II

A couple of months ago, I was lucky enough to stumble across Eureka Brewing’s post looking for collaborators for the joint BBA/EBY Brettanomyces yeast experiment. Since I already headed down that rabbit hole myself six months ago with my own Great Brett Yeast Experiment I, I decided I should continue influencing my house character towards, well, delicious. So I signed up. Sadly, I didn’t have the resources to handle all 20 yeasts, so I picked what I could handle. On Saturday, I got a packet of eight small vials containing the Brettanomyces isolates from Sam’s collection:

EBY002 (B. dreifonteinii I)
EBY005 (B. cantillon I)
EBY008 (B. cantillon II)
EBY009 (B. cantillon III)
EBY010 (B. cantillon IV)
EBY019 (B. cucurbita I)
EBY035 (B. cucurbita II)
EBY038 (B. cantillon VIII)

As Sam notes, the names of the different yeasts do not represent current taxonomic nomenclature, but rather the source of each yeast he isolated. Undoubtedly, many are the same. But I’m willing to take that chance in the name of science. And delicious beer.

To prepare the starters, I boiled 200 g. of Breiss Pilsen DME in 2000 ml. of RO water, chilled the wort, and then divided it into 10 sanitized mason jars (I made two extra to simplify the math as well as to give me two extra starters I can use for the dregs of beers I'll be drinking later this week; check back if you’re really that desperate to know). I then sanitized the outside of each vial, added the vial to a starter, and sealed the jar. Now for the waiting. Once things start happening, I can plan to step the starters up, and then get ready to brew two gallon batches of each strain. Hopefully I’ll have enough carboys cleaned out by that point. If not, I can always buy more.

(9/2/2013)

4 comments:

  1. 2 gallon batches of each. I was a bit more conservative and will only be doing .5 gal batches of each strain.

    Good luck and I look forward to hearing updates. I'm glad there were so many good brewers willing to experiment with the unknown.

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  2. I'm curious if you've done additional tastings. The most recent tasting that I did was at 13 months after brewing, and the flavors/aromas have changed considerably. I looked at the score sheet, and it appears that very few people have entered their tasting notes, and of those that have, there are only tastings up through 2 months.

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