Let's get yeasty up in this beer: Brettanomyces

Beer is made with a few key ingredients: grains (barley, wheat, rye), hops, water and yeast. Towards the end of the brewing process, yeast is added to the beer. Yeast is added to induce "fermentation."

Beer: how does it work? Miracles.

During this process, the yeast eats up all the sugar from the grains and shit outs CO2 and alcohol as waste. One man's micro-bacterial byproduct is another man's good times. These little bacteria guys are responsible for your boozy good time.

Isn't yeast magical?  Anyway, I'm not a home brewer, wizard, or beer engineer. I don't know a whole lot about the brewing process outside of a few brewing 101 articles I have read online. I do know that different types of hops contribute different flavors to beer. I also know that different types of yeasts and the amount of yeast used results in differences between beers.

Yeasty. A yeast cell.

 

For example, you may have had a "bottle conditioned" beer. These are beers where live yeast strains are left inside the bottle to continue fermenting. These beers will often be more boozy and carbonated, and are typically more funky. A lot of Belgian beers are bottle conditioned. The appeal of bottle conditioned beers is that they continue to ferment and mature, and can be stored for a very long time. You may know some family or friends who have a wine cellar. Wine contains live yeast strands, and wine matures over the years and benefits from aging. The same goes with bottle conditioned beer. Certain beers actually take on different taste profiles when left to mellow out in your basement for a few years. The other benefit of a bottle conditioned beer is that the yeast helps preserve the beer. Most filtered beers seem to break down pretty quickly and are best consumed fresh. That is why your typical lager or ale has a shelf life of about 3 to 4 months. 

I am going somewhere with this, of course. I want to talk about a specific yeast strain, Brettanomyces, or "Brett" for short. Why do I care so much about Brett that I am dedicating a post to it? Because Brett is a yeast strain used by the Trappist monks who brew Orval and by Jolly Pumpkin Artisan Ales, a brewery whose beer is on my radar.

Wikipedia has a good write-up on Brettanomyces: The yeast exists in the wild on the skin of fruit. But, more interesting, the yeast was discovered by the Carlsberg brewery in 1904 by N. Hjelte Claussen. How did he discover it? When he was investigating what was causing spoilage in English ales. Talk about irony: a yeast strain that originally was spoiling beers is now being used to make some of the most highly acclaimed beers in the world. 

meet "Brett"

Brett is used in wine, at low levels. If too much Brett is used it has a negative impact on the way wine tastes. And, in most styles of beer Brett is considered a contaminant which contributes off-flavors. Now for some styles, including Belgian Ales, Lambics, Geuze, Flanders Red, Sour Ales and Oud Bruins, Brett can be a contributing or defining character in the beer.

Orval is one of a handful of authentic Trappist beers (perhaps an article on Trappist beers would be appropriate on some other day, in the meantime go here: click me), and is the only Trappist beer with Brett characteristics. Brett is added to the beer at bottling. Orval is a Belgian Ale, and considered to be the flagship "Brett-beer" by a lot of reviewers. In fact, I am going to review Orval before I drink any other beer with Brett characteristics just so I can get an appreciation for the Brett. 

I have heard that Brett has some interesting flavor profiles. I've heard that Brett tastes funky, sour, tart, "like a barnyard," "like leather," like band-aids, and I've even heard it described as being rancid or over-ripped. Obviously the way Brett influences the beer will have a lot to do with the other flavors in the beer. And that will be the key thing to pay attention to. There are a lot of really cool beers that use Brett besides Orval. The Jolly Pumpkin Oro de Calabaza will be the next beer I try after Orval with Brett, and Jolly Pumpkin is a brewery known for using lots of Brett in their beer. 

So there you have it, some information on Brett and a look into the near future. I have a bottle of Orval just chilling, so I may get around to it sooner than later.