Beer Forum

I brewed a Saison du Buff clone (beer + herbs) with wyeast 3711 French Saison yeast back in July that finished at 1.006. As an experiment, I pitched the dregs of a Boulevard Saison Brett into this beer in a 5 gallon carboy and forgot about it for 5 months. It formed a pellicle that's starting to go away. Tasted it last night, and it had thinned out even more, but there's not much brett character there. It's not acetic (surprisingly), but it's also not very interesting at this point. Would there be any issues with adding some unfermented wort to this carboy to give the brett some more food? Would this even help? This is my first try at a "sour" beer.

When you pitched the brett into your saison at 1.006 there really was not a lot of residual sugars for the brett to take hold of in the beer. If you want some more brett character, you could always boil up a bit more DME and maltodextrin to give the brett some more to chew on. The maltodextrin is unfermentable by saccharomyces and the brett will quickly get to work on it enhancing the flavor and aroma of the beer by the brett fermentation. Be aware that the maltodextrin will boil over and burn quite easily on the stove top and is kind of a pain in the ass to work with. You could just use straight maltodextrin as well and boil that with a bit of water. 1# of maltodextrin will contribute about 8 gravity points in a 5 gallon batch.