I very proudly share my March birthday with my longtime buddy Matt with whom I schemed on a celebratory beer for the occasion. When we met more than 10 years ago I felt like I met a doppelganger, not just 'cause of the birthdate or that we both wore desert trekkers in the early aughts, but more the tantamount fondness for cinema and a budding interest in good beer--and the friendship has since been cemented with a decade littered with hundreds of reels and innumberable beers..Lubitsch, Powell-Pressburger, Preston Sturges, Naruse, Ozu, Billy Wilder, Charles Laughton, Tati, Aldomovar,Victory, De Dolle, Hanssens, Cantillon, Drie, Fantome, Dupont, Thiriez, De Ranke, Russian River, Pretty Things...
Matt and I both have a deep affection for the city of Montreal, and further for it's crowning jewel the Dieu Du Ciel brewpub. Matt tried a beer on tap at the brewpub during his yearly northern sabbatical last year called L'Herbe à Détourne that he fell for and when we started talking about a birthday beer, that was his immediate inspiration. L'Herbe à Détourne is a strong, citra hopped tripel that I got to try for the first time this summer out of the tanks at DDC and now know why Matt was so smitten. Jean-Francois from DDC recently told me the story of the name of the beer which translates to something like a walk on the grass of forgetfulness, which is a brilliant play on the strength of the beer.
When it came to piecing together a recipe my input was to rough it up a bit by adding 25% rye to the grist and fermenting it with a menagerie of yeast wild and tame, and lactic acid bacteria--so was born BrotherFish. This Piscean brew is by far the most tropical tasting beer I've ever made, lush with guava, pineapple, mango and some light durian funk (in a good way) from the brett and acidity from the bacteria. It's a beer for escapists, dreamers...Pisces.
Since the main saccharomyces in the beer was a saison strain, primary fermentation was swift and highly attenuative. In order to get some character from the brett, we left it in secondary for a few months while the brett worked on the more complex sugars, and then dry hopped it for the last week to brighten the nose up before capturing it in bottle for refermentation.
I enjoyed this beer so much I re-brewed a clean version with a blend of the Dupont and Thiriez saison strains to have on tap next to the funky bottle version.
BrotherFish
OG 1.078 FG 1.004 IBU 33 ABV 9.8% SRM 6
65% Pils
25% Rye Malt
10% Munich
mashed at 150
.5 oz Citra @ 60
1 oz. Citra @ 5
1.5 oz Citra @ flameout
2 oz. Citra dry hop
fermented with a 3rd generation slurry of East Coast Yeast Saison Blend, Roselare Blend, and other critters at ambient in the 80's.
fecund tropics, acid, tastes like Gauguin's Tahiti...
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Damn.. sounds downright delicious. I was given a 1/2 pound of Citra that I have yet to put to use.. you have me inspired.
ReplyDeleteGreat post and great looking beer. Quick question. Did you pitch all the yeast and bugs at the same time? If so, why transfer to secondary? I am relatively new to brett, but addicted. I have a similar saison sitting currently on 3711 and brett b. gravity is at 1.000, but I keep hearing that the brett will feed off the dormant sacc and continue to funktify. Any thoughts?
ReplyDeleteThe fermentation was from a yeast slurry of multiple strains of sach, brett, and bacteria--so mixed ferment primary. I transfered the beer to secondary to get it off the trub and brighten, then let it sit for a few months before finally dry-hopping. Brett can continue to work for a year or more, creating an increasing amount of character.
ReplyDeleteWell...that sounds absolutely fabulous! I may have to give this brew a try...or something like it as I've never used Rye in a beer before. If you were to brew this again would you change the amount of rye up or down?
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