Danstar Belle Saison and BRY-97. Who's using them?

Jack , I think it produces a very soft-clean estery flavor, guess some kind of peach tones are present,accompanying maltiness and complementing it with the dryness coming from sugar addition turns into a very enjoyable flavor.Remember that esters come upfront and are predominant cos this style has a low bitterness profile.

Hope my poor english has described it in an understandable way.

Cheers !!

 

Might have to give the Belle a try next spring when I fill my garage with saisons and sours when the heat ramps up!

BRY97 isn't a bad yeast. Slow as hell to get going, ferments fast, and then is equally as slow to flocc out. However, when it does flocc out, it packs very well, and clears brilliantly with a simple cold crash. Does leave a very clean profile to the beer. Cleaner than US05 to the point, it does mute some subtle hop qualities and esters that may have formed. Good attenuation with it though, and it likes it warmer than US05, so I find it to have great qualities for the newer brewer, IMO.

 

Thank you for sharing your perceptions of Danstar Belle.

I recently brewed a hoppy Saison using Danstar Belle (I used a total of 2 ounces of Amarillo for late hopping & dry hopping). What I perceived from the yeast was spicy favors but since I used a fair amount of Amarillo for flavor/aroma I do not have a lot of confidence in describing the yeast produced flavors.

One thing I feel confident is stating that Danstar Belle yeast is highly attenuative: my Saison had an OG = 1.059 and a FG = 1.001; an Apparent Attenuation of 80%. My primary fermentation was complete in only 6 days.

Cheers!

 

Not to sound like a jackass, but why would you say that you can't imagine dry yeast be as good if you've never tried it? I haven't be able to tell any difference between US-05 and Wyeast American ale which are the strains I use for my IPAs and pale ales. Dry yeast is cheaper and although I have the equipment to make starters, including a stir plate, typically I'd rather pitch 2 packets of dry yeast than make a starter. From what I've read dry yeast gets a bad rap from years ago because there weren't a wide variety of strains. There are still more strains of liquid yeast than dry yeast but unless you need a strain that only comes in liquid form I don't see a reason not to use dry yeast unless you have used a previous dry yeast that you actually found the liquid to be better. I haven't been brewing enough to compare a wide variety of dry vs liquid but when brewing something like an IPA or PA where yeast characteristics don't matter as much, I'll take US-05 over American ale any day.

 

Jack, next time give it a try to everything the same except changing Amarillo to Styrian or EKG, just to compare

 

Got my first BR 97 batch (IPA) fermenting at the moment. 1.058 OG, direct o2 aerated wort (60 seconds), rehydrated yeast, pitched at the mr malty recommended rate, and held at a 68F fermentation temperature.

Didn't check the carboy until 16 hours after pitching, but at that point it already have 3" of krausen and loads of airlock activity. Checked it again 68 hours after pitching and founds loads of krausen had shot through my airlocks and left splatter marks on the inside of my chest freezer lid. Took a gravity reading and was at 70% apparent attenuation at that point. Replaced airlocks with clean ones and verified they were still bubbling like a champ. Upped the fermenter to 70F to push the fermentation / reduce diacytel.

Checked it the next day (at the 90 hour mark) and the airlock activity was down to 1 bubble every 45 seconds. Danstar website had a nice graph on it that illustrated how BR 97 typically finishes the bulk of fermentation by the end of day 4 and I must say that seems to accurately map onto my first experience thus far.

 

i'm kegging my first beer with belle saison this weekend. here's the quick extract recipe i did, also my first beer with kohatu hops:
http://www.brewtoad.com/recipes/kohatu-belle

my actual og was 1054 and it dropped to 1002 in 9 days. kept it at a pretty steady 74 deg. i'll report back after it's ready to drink.

 

I don't know the specifics of the process either, and I imagine that there is some impact on the yeast so that the beer brewed with dry yeast may not be the same as the beer brewed with liquid. But "not the same as" does not imply inferiority. Just think of it as a slightly different yeast and see if it does anything for you or not.

As an example, and to get to the OPs topic, I recently brewed a beer with the Belle Saison yeast. I found it to be like the WYeast 3711, which, while not distasteful to me, is also not my favorite saison strain. Others seem to like the 3711, and they may like this yeast. I may never use this strain again. But it's not because it is a dry yeast, it's because I prefer a particular liquid strain to it.

 

Excuse my ignorance and since my post in February I've used us 05 with great results as well as 34/70 lager yeast which was similarly awesome.

 

I didn't even realize your post was from that long ago. Glad you enjoyed it.

 

Sometimes I forget to look at the dates on these things. I see a thread, assume it is new, and zero in on a comment that was actually made 8 months ago. Oops. Glad you are finding yeasts to brew with that are awesome.

 

I'm the same way. I still prefer liquid yeast. But that's mostly because yeast starters get me that much more excited for brew day.

 

Same here. I tend to use liquid if I time permits and I have done some advance planning, which is most of the time. Making a starter is an extra step, but caring for the yeast feels like part of the experience.

 

I've got 18 gallons of belle saison to bottle up next week, It should be as good as the first batch.

 

Just checked my gravity today after 8 full days of fermentation and holy crap I'm down to 1.005 FG (91% attenuation). Next time I'm going to skip the 1# of corn sugar in this 11g recipe and maybe even mash higher (than 150F like I did) since I like my FG around 1.010 - 1.013 personally. I also mashed for 75 minutes on that batch, so maybe I'll shoot for the standard 60 minute mash next time.

 

That'd be a little over 98% apparent attenuation.

 

I've only just stumbled (accidentally) onto this thread so I'm very late to the discussion...but FWIW, WY1272 is basically BRY97.
BRY97 was the strain used by the Ballantine brewery of Newark, NJ for their ale, IPA, porter, and stout (which were top notch "craft like"brews).
It is not the same as the so called "Chico" strain; that one is related to BRY96, which was Ballantine's "beer" strain (that's not a misread...Bally's "lager" beers (at least in the Newark days) were evidently fermented with an ale strain, albeit one with an unusually 'clean' character).

BRY97 by the way is a really great and robust strain. Surprisingly enough, its really great even in it's dried form.

 

This is the first that I heard WY1272 linked to Ballantine. MrMalty lists it as derived from Anchor (Liberty Ale). It is easy for me to believe that Fritz Maytag might have sought the same yeast that had been used in Ballantine IPA, but I never heard that before. In any event, makes me want to try BRY97. I like 1272.

 

I brewed a saison with Belle Saison last year. I fermented it at a low temp for a saison. I thought it was very middle of the road and I mean that in a good way. It fermented dry but not too dry. I've previously used 3711, which performed according to reputation. Belle saison was less estery and less peppery. It produced a nice summertime b
eer. I would use it again.

 

There were 2 yeasts logged as from a Newark brewery, BRY 96 and 97.

Ballantine closed in 71, when did anchor start making ales? Yeast gurus say it is 1272/051.

I find it to be fruitier, more mouthfeel, slower starts, and better floculation compared to Chico, Bry-96. It smells and tastes more British.