Gyle 13a - Brett Pale ale - tasting notes

On the 23rd of March I brewed Gyle 13 - Bramling X SMaSH Pale Ale (details of that to come soon), and as I had been building up a culture of Brettanomyces yeast from bottle dregs (3 Fontainen and Cantillon to be precise) I threw in a couple of kilograms of MO pale malt to the spent grains from Gyle 13 and did another mash whilst Gyle 13 was boiling.

I kept the wort until the next day, and then did the boil on the 24th.

I was just aiming for a low gravity wort for the first 20 litre bash at this, and got a decent enough low gravity (1.028 pre boil, 1.036 post boil) wort from the mash which I bittered with 65g of Galena for 60 minutes, and aroma'd with 35g of Saaz at flameout.

I brewed this with the yeast cake from the brett starter that I had made before and it brewed well, with delicious aromas coming from the FV. It did take quite a bit longer to brew than it would have done with US-05, I think it took about 2 weeks just to do primary, whereas US-05 usually takes about 3 days.

I racked it to secondary, put the yeast cake in the fridge, and dry hopped it with 150g of Triskel for a week, and left it for a further few weeks until the 6th of May (the day before my birthday) when I finally bottled it at a final gravity of 1.005. This gave me a bottled ABV of 4.1%, not too shabby for a second runnings experiment brew.

I poured myself a glass just now, it's still got a slight haze but nothing to stop me from enjoying it. This was stored in my cellar and poured at cellar temperature to see how it reacted. It reacted with a decent amount of life, but not too lively.

The head was off white, but dissipated very quickly, even though there were bubbles forming throughout the drinking.

The colour of the beer was a slightly hazy golden hay colour, very inviting. As it's a brett beer I will forgive the haziness, this time.

The aroma is one of a light sourness and grass, hints of tartness as well. Very enjoyable

Body, this is very thin, but pretty much what I expected from a single malt beer brewed with Brettanomyces.

The taste, well for such a large amount of bittering hop, it's surprisingly drinkable. There is a bitterness, but it seems balanced with the rest of the flavours. I get hints of herbs and grass, and a low level sour/tart hit at the end that mixed with the bitterness, leave your mouth dry, and wanting more.

As I got a full brew out of this beer, I will keep updating this post with details of how the beer changes over time, I expect the yeasts to keep working, and I expect it to get sourer over time.