Bourgeois Daydreams

Mill the grains and mash at 149°F (65°C) for 60 minutes.

While sparging, maintain the mash temperature at 149°F (65°C), and top up as needed to get about 6 gallons (23 liters) of wort, depending on your evaporation rate.

Boil for 60 minutes, adding the hops according to the schedule.

After the boil, do a whirlpool step: Stir or recirculate to create a vortex, add the hops, and allow 5 minutes to steep. Chill to about 84°F (29°C), aerate the wort, and pitch the yeast.

During fermentation, allow the temperature to free-rise as high as it wants to go, and avoid head pressure on the yeast—for example, instead of an airlock, loosely cover the top of the fermentor with a sanitized piece of foil or cheesecloth. Watch the kräusen; when it starts to fall, you can add the airlock.

Once the gravity has dropped to about 1.004 (1°P), pitch the Brett. Once the beer is bone-dry, add the dry hops for 3–5 days, then crash and remove the hops (or rack).

Carbonate to about 2.75 volumes of CO2 if kegging, or 3.2 volumes if bottle-conditioning—and we also add more Brett at bottling. Wait 2 weeks for a fresh, hoppy version of Bourgeois—or let it ride. We recently opened one that was 4.5 years old, and it tastes great.

BREWER’S NOTES
Water & pH: We shoot for a 2:1 chloride-sulfate ratio, and we adjust the pH in our kettle with lactic acid to knock out about 5.1.

Fermentation: Back pressure is the enemy of ester production. Our Brett culture started as a modified version of Omega OYL-218 All the Bretts, and now we re-pitch it from the dregs of bottles from our previous batch of Brett-conditioned beer we made. We think of the Brett as a seasoning, not as the main attraction of this beer. But these are all just guidelines—make it your own!