Brett (Brettanomyces) yeast has always held a rather special place in the beverage fermentation landscape. In wine making, it’s a dreaded contaminant which can wreak havoc in the winery. In beer making, the picture is very different.

There is plenty of romance around Brett yeast – its wildness, its unpredictability, the funky notes it gives to beer, the way it evolves in time.

Historically Brett is used with no control, in spontaneous fermentations, especially in beer styles
such as Geuze.

Harnessing such a yeast, making it controllable and to a certain extent predictable, has been an ambitious goal for Fermentis for a while now. And their team of beer experts, which includes
many Belgians familiar with the strain, made this goal even more personal – the scientific name of the strain is of course being Brettanomyces bruxellensis.

As brewers become more and more creative, looking for unusual styles and stand-out flavors, Fermentis knew that if they could succeed in producing the very first dried Brett yeast, they’d be providing something new and special to the brewers of the world. And that’s what they’ve achieved with
SafBrew™ BR-8.

In the video below Simon Jeanpierre, Fermentis’ Technical Sales Manager for APAC, introduces SafBrew BR-8 and reveals the best practices for making the most of this wild yeast strain.