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Without a photo, it sounds like you have the makings of a pellicle, although the statement "a thick ropiness below the surface" is a bit confusing. Pellicles form on top of the beer, and have the appearance of anything from a slightly translucent film to what looks like a long-lasting, inanimate krausen. Sometimes people use the term ropiness to describe a ...
6
The standard wisdom I've seen is, as mentioned, that glass and metal "should" be fine but plastic is much more prone to scratching, making it a concern.
Brett has a reputation of being very resilient and being able to survive in small nooks and crannies of your equipment, waiting to infect future batches regardless of how well you may try to sanitize it.
I ...
5
You're right on the common combination of pedio and brett due to diacetyl production. But pedio doesn't start working for 2-4 months, and has a time-frame of 4-9+ months. So you have plenty of time to source brett to add to help with diacetyl production from the pedio.
I'm honestly not sure if a traditional lager-style diacetyl rest (probably with newly-...
5
smelled horrible -- like butyric acid, so I know it got colder than the recommended temperature
Butyric acid producers like Clostridium favor temps around 104°F (37°C), which is also a similar temp as what is favored by some lactobacillus strains, so they way you control its production is by lowering the wort pH.
but then thought to try and add some ...
4
Brettanomyces comes in many forms, leading to many different flavour profiles. The main three you will come across commercially are:
B.Claussenii - Fruity with mild funk
B.Bruxellensis - Tasty Horse Blanket (this is Orval)
B.Lambicus - heavy funk with sour fruits
Depending on when you add the Brett to the fermentation will determine how soured your beer ...
3
Brett beers can be very interesting, and aren't necessarily sour unless the source also was sour. Brett usually gives more of a leather or "barnyard" character which can evolve with longer aging. Brett works very slowly so the 40-day guideline isn't far from the truth but you might need to wait even longer, many months possibly, to get much out of it. If ...
3
I would start with
http://www.milkthefunk.com
These guys have done it all. They have a great wiki on mixed fermentation.
I think the type of graph your asking for really has too many variables to quantify in a simple graph and no one has been up to the challenge. Just to hit the major points would have to factor. OGs, Brett%, Sacc%, Lacto%, Pedio%, etc. ...
3
An unorthodox (by today's standards) way to deal with it is the really old school way of using mustard seed.
When beer turns ropy without being sour, it is
easily restored by mixing in the proportion of one
spoonful of mustard to every fourteen gallons, in a
little of the beer, and pouring it into the bung-hole.
In the course of the next day ...
2
Did you use real Brett Or Faux Brett (Saccharomyces "Bruxellensis" Trois)?
In either case it's probably dead or very weak, usually the Brett is added at the time of bottling.
Repitch your bottles
2
You can certainly pitch the Brett later. As mentioned the Brett will help with diacetyl, but it also helps with the ropey dextrinous 'gunk' that Pedi starts to throw in there. Without Brett that stuff doesn't clear out very easily. You need Brett to break that stuff down.
2
Oak barrels also let a bit of oxygen in. Apparently you can recreate this with on of those soft orange carboy caps - they are more porous to oxygen than others.
Standard precautions for Brett are to keep the soft parts separate from you other beers. But Brett isn't that hard to kill, proper sanitation should be enough. And if any fruit grows near your ...
2
In a sour ale the acid is suppose to balance the malt opposed to hops bittering to balance.
Sounds like you have an acid base for a blending batch. If you have a PH meter check it. Then blend with a normally fermented beer that has little hop bittering to get to a pH typical of the sour style you're going for.
2
In reality if the brew is that malodorous and sour to taste then it is probably worth discarding. 1.75 gals is nothing in the greater scheme of things. The alternative is attempting to drink it! :0(
However as this is more of an experiment than a production run - why not keep it and see what happens. If you have a the spare space and the container is spare ...
1
Yesterday the pH was 3.7. I drank a little and realized I made vinegar! The cheesy smell is gone, and the vinegar taste is overwhelming. There must have been too much exposure to oxygen. Oh well. Now the question is whether to keep it for cooking.
1
It's best to catch diacetyl early and do a diacetyl (increase temp 68-72F) rest before racking off the yeast. Usually the diacetyl from bacteria is cleaned up by true brett, not so much by faux brett.
You may be able to trick yeast into cleaning this up by racking this onto the trub if a fresh beer and getting it warm. Or by growing a full pitch of healthy ...
1
When you pitch a mixed blend each microbe acts on different sugars and other chemicals at different times as the environment in the wort changes to each microbes optimum environment.
If you only pitch saccharomyces first then it can potentially create an environment that other microbes like Lacto and Brett can't survive in. For example Lacto doesn't work ...
1
As they say: Do Not Fear The Bug! :)
Your brewery will not get infected if you brew this beer.
All plastic equipment used in the brewing (post boil) should be considered infected and should never be used with a clean beer ever again. Mark the hoses/spoons to indicated that they are a bio-hazard :p Plastic fermenters count for the previous rule, but they ...
1
Wait longer, they'll wake up some day.
For comparison, my most recent brett beer got brett b in the primary, fermented out to 1.010 (typical for the other yeast) and then sat for two month doing nothing before the gravity dropped & flavors appeared. Ended up at 1.005. A bit of pellicle formed later, but I don't think pellicle formation tells you too ...
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