What's Brewing? (In Your Mind)

I agree with you here but based upon your numerous postings I thought you were a 'NEIPA' guy.

I do not keg but presently in my cellar I have:

• Tmavý Ležák (Czech Dark Lager)
• Bohemian Pilsner
• 1896 Michelob (a Pilsner)
• Classic American Pilsner
• Kolsch (which drinks like a lager)

I do have a Centennial IPA that is available for drinking and an El Dorado IPA that is in the bottle conditioning phase - when I bottled that batch a few days ago my brewing room smelled glorious! I have high hopes for that El Dorado IPA.

It's all good!!

Cheers!

 

Can you get at any Omega yeast? The Voss and Horndell can ferment hot as well.
That being said, I've found that saison strains don't necessarily taste great at high temps in my brewery. YMMV

 

Needless to say but that will depend upon the specific Saison yeast strain(s). Which specific Saison strains did not 'work well' in your brewery? What was 'wrong' in those beers?

Cheers!

 

I've found that the higher temperatures lead to them being overly phenolic. 3711, 3724, 3726, Belle Saison, the Mangrove Jack's strain. I try to keep everything under 80 now.

 

Austin Homebrew says 585 is a blend, as follows:
"Notes : A blend of Trappist type yeast (2) and one Belgian ale type yeast."

Maybe we could try to identify the three strains used and recreate this blend? Of course, that's assuming all of the three are commercially available.

 

Needless to say White Labs knows what is 'in' WLP585. I wonder if you sent them an e-mail that would provide you with this information?

When I spoke to a White Labs person at the recent HomebrewCon he stated that they had problems producing WLP585. I wonder if the issue is getting/propagating the proper mix of strains?

Cheers!

@honkey

 

Unfortunately, my experience with Belgian yeast strains is pretty limited. Speaking very generally, I don't like Belgian styles (Other than lambics...4VG has an off putting flavor to me). I would assume that with a blend like that though, it's not a matter of "getting" the strains as they would likely have each one of them isolated and in a bank. I would also assume that they are propagated separately and then mixed in a specific ratio for consistency. I don't think a blend would be propagated with each strain in a single propagator. However, I also know very little about White Labs (I've heard of too many issues with them for me to have any confidence ordering from them), so I'm speaking from experience with how other labs I've worked with deal with blends.

If it's not possible to get the info from White Labs, it might be possible to get the strain information from a competitor that has done PCR testing. I would reach out to Imperial Organic, Yeast Bay, and Omega to see if anyone has info on the blend. Another great resource for that type of thing is Milk the Funk on Facebook.

 

Weedy, needless to say I am not a yeast production expert but I am wondering if the ‘issue’ of WLP585 is that White Labs changed their process when they went from vials to their new packaging of Pure Pitch?

For example, when they were packaging in vials they could separately grow up differing strains and then when they went to the final packaging process they could combine those separately grown strains such that they are in proper proportions in the vial.

As I understand the Pure Pitch method:

“Proprietary process reduces risk of contamination by growing and delivering yeast in the same package”.

https://www.whitelabs.com/yeast/purepitch

If I am understanding the above properly, all of the separate yeast strains need to exist within the Pure Pitch pouch as “growing” occurs.

What do you think?

In the past I have exchanged a number of e-mails with Nick Impellitteri of Yeast Bay. He was basically selling me on his Saison Yeast blend products (Saison Blend and Saison Blend II). I have read about these strains via Drew Beechum’s blog and they read to me as very different products from WLP585.

@DrewBeechum

Cheers

 

That sounds highly probable about the Pure Pitch. The reason I recommended Yeast Bay for asking about the strains was that maybe Nick would know since he has a relationship with White Labs. I know his own blends and yeast strains are not the same as any of White Labs. I'm assuming they have an exclusivity agreement. I haven't use his saison blends, but I find Nick to be fascinating and highly intelligent with his experimental strains. I've heard good things about those blends, but I have no first hand experience.

 

Well, we had our second kid 2 months back, just put our house on the market, and a potential new job is in the works, so let’s just say I’m definitely thinking long term on brewing right now. Thankfully, I brewed enough to stay stocked during these stressful times.

I’ve been loving my no-boil Berliner weiße - it’s absolutely delicious - sour and crushable. Plus I only have to put in about 2 hours worth of work to get from grain to glass. Will be doing a few more of these once we settle in, and try out some different fruit/dry hopped variations.

And, since fall will be here soon... I’ll be brewing up another batch of my oatmeal stout. Its basically a Shakespeare stout clone. Will add coffee to the keg on this one. The other half of the batch will be fermented with the hornindal kveik strain, which I’m really looking forward to trying on something dark.

 

I just saw this post. I currently have a pale ale on tap hopped with 2:1 Enigma and Idaho 7. My first time with Enigma and second with Idaho 7. It's very tropical but also with a dank, resinous quality that surprised me. I assume that this is from the Enigma as I did not perceive this in an all-Idaho APA last year. I'm definitely planning on using Enigma again, but not as a single hop. I'm curious about your experience using it with Belgian yeast.

 

Per another thread, I'll be brewing Hefe is in the near future, along with a British Strong Ale.

I'll be entering into one of the biggest local competition called Midwinter, therefore happens mid winter. I have a barleywine that's going into 33A and 33B. Once that's bottled, I may make refinements, of course refinements will hit the year after submital. Just brewed a Märzen, that there will be time to refine and submit this year.

Last, waiting on a Helles. May make some recipe changes on that one.

 

Haven’t gotten around to that one yet but the Enigma hops are still chillin’. I still plan on using a Belgian yeast also . That’s good to get more positive feedback on those hops. Couldn’t find much info/reviews about them, some negative. Thanks for the input. I’ll get back to ya when I brew and keg that up.

Also my few experiences with Idaho 7 I got pine and orange.

 

Brut IPA.

 

I've definitely got one of these on the back burner as well. So many ideas, so few beer drinkers in my life.

 

Took the spring off due to children's sports but now I'm back in action. Recently brewed a Hefeweizen for me and a Summer Shandy for the wife. This weekend I'm brewing a hazy APA and the following week I'll be doing my Oktoberfest. I always seem to wait until the last minute to do seasonal beers so I'm going to get it done now and let it sit in the keg for a while before tapping to ensure it's ready on time.

 

I keep looking at this Russian black bread recipe:
https://smittenkitchen.com/2009/04/black-bread/
and wondering whether I could turn it into a beer. Like maybe equal parts rye, wheat and pale ale malt, top off with a bit of molasses (or maybe substitute muscovado sugar), not too hoppy, ferment with Windsor, add restrained levels of nibs, coffee, fennel seed and caraway seed in secondary. (At the risk of being inauthentic, I'd skip the butter, vinegar, shallots and wheat bran...)

 

I'd do rye and dark wheat. Use rice hulls, since they're essentially the bran of rice.

 

Good thinking!

 

So I decided to come back to this list I posted at the time and see what has changed...

The Munich Helles was brewed, followed by the Pils as planned… So #1 and #2 were completed. The NE IPA is being done next weekend (not DIPA), and will be my wet-hop harvest NE IPA… So small tweak on that original plan.

The Festbier/Oktoberfest is being subbed out for a Dunkel, followed immediately by a Traditional Bock. Then that Pale will happen, followed by the Bitter/Mild. So the only real change at this point is the Festbier/Oktoberfest sub to a Dunkel/Bock duo.

So now the “to do” list looks like:

1.) Wet Hop Harvest NE IPA
2.) Dunkel
3.) Traditional Bock
4.) Session IPA / Pale
5.) Bitter/Mild
6.) Pilsner