I decided to use spelt flour. This was mainly because it was easy to get, and I was confident that by mixing the flour with the grain first, my BIAB system would handle the slightly stickier mash.
The plan was to pitch some brett bruxellensis from a bottle of orval after primary fermentation was underway to get a bit of brett character in the final beer.
I used 80% pale malt (Crisp, Flagon) and 20% organic spelt flour from dove farms. I aimed for a SG of 1.045 meaning if it really attenuates to 1.002 it is 5.64% abv. I didn't want to go much lower due to concerns about lack of mouthfeel. Bittering was with fuggles at start of boil to 28 IBU. I later dry hopped with some (15g for 10L batch) mandarina bavaria. Water was adjusted with sodium chloride and gypsum to make something vaguely like one of the water profiles in farmhouse ales, although from memory I struggled to get chloride down to the right level. Mash was single infusion BIAB at 65 C.
Yeast was mangrove jacks M27 Belgian saison ale.
Yeast was pitched, and shortly after (1 day?), brett from a relatively fresh (< 6 months) bottle of orval was pitched. Beer was left for 4 weeks, signs of airlock activity finished after 3.
I made an absolute hash of bottling. Aiming for 2.6 vols of CO2 (just in case brett takes it up further) I had to add a liter of water to make up enough liquid for how much sugar I added to the bottling bucket, then the sugar didn't all dissolve which I noticed post bottling, so I quickly dissolved the remainder in some hot water then used a pipette to dose each bottle proportionally (I was using some 500ml beer style bottles and some 750ml champagne style bottles). Plain table sugar was used. This would normally be completely fermented by brewers yeast so I wasn't worried about the brett over-carbing, since, it too, will simply use all of it. I also gave it longer than normal to complete fermentation so hopefully no bottle bombs. Orval reportedly leave it three weeks.
The beer poured a golden yellow with a weird sudsy head that lasted a few minutes. Carbonation was high with big bubbles and quite a carbonic bite. Since brewing this beer I have had a commercial lager beer with mandarina bavaria hops, and I have determined that I don't like the tangerine pithy taste. When this beer was first tasted, the thin mouthfeel from the brett combined with the (to me) slightly unpleasant fruity bitterness combined with slight brett funk made it a little bit like when one gets a little bit of sick in one's mouth after eating an orange and then running about. However, with time the hops faded and the brett became a little bit more assertive, which was better. The weather warmed up a bit too, which made the dryness of the beer more pleasant. If I was doing this beer again I would probably get rid of the later hops and maybe add some calcium chloride to try and round out the flavor a bit.
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