Julius Clone from Zymurgy Magazine

It's available to AHA members at https://www.homebrewersassociation.org/homebrew-recipe/tree-house-brewing-company-julius-clone/

If you are not a member, I'm not sure if the link will work, but you could do a 30 day free trial membership: https://www.homebrewersassociation.org/membership/free-trial/

I suspect if you do, you'll find other benefits make it worth joining up. In addition to Zymurgy and the various recipes you can find on the website, you get access to presentations from previous homebrewers conferences. You also might be able to capitalize on various beer-related places, too.

I hope you don't think me a jerk for not just copying and pasting, but I figured since they have this 30 day offer, you may as well take a look and see if it would be worth 30 odd dollars a year.

 

There's nothing wrong with not violating a copyright.

 

You can also read all about it here (it is the source for the Zymurgy article):
https://trinitybrewers.com/brews/ipa/julius-clone-treehouse-brewing-ipa/

The only thing more ridiculous than this recipe is the line at Tree House on a Saturday afternoon. They seem to have done their homework, though.

 

I tried this recipe & at first it tasted great! However, over time, even in a cold keg in kegerator, the Saison yeast continued to work and made the beer more phenolic. After about a month it ended up tasting like a hoppy Saison. Either the yeast continued to work or the hops faded and allowed more phenols to come through...

Anyone else have this experience or have any suspicions of what this might be?

 

Firstly let me get this out of the way: I have not brewed this clone.

The recipe calls for three yeast strains: “Day 1 – S04/T58/WB06:92%/5%/3% – pitch all day 1 at regular pitching temp 72º”

I have brewing experience with using S-04 and T-58 from past batches. I have not yet brewed with WB-06 (a German wheat beer strain).

Did you use a Saison yeast strain as well in your batch? If so, what percentage?

Cheers!

 

WB-06 is Diastaticus and POF+. T-58 is POF+ as well. I’ve tried some combo of those yeasts who knows how many times, never again. Phenols always come through. Got tired of wasting hops. I have no idea if those are actually the yeasts they use. If it is I doubt they actually pitch them all at once.

 

What kind of ratios were you using ? I’m certainly intrigued by the idea of blending yeasts. Sorta like boosting hop character by blending... definitely don’t want obvious phenols though ! A bit of bubblegum ester would be desirable though.

 

Yes, did the exact recipe even taking into account cell density differentiation between dry yeast strains. Like @wasatchback mentioned.. phenols come through.

So unless Tree House kills off their yeast at packaging.. idk how they keep the diastaticus strains from producing
overwhelming phenols.

Then again, I wasn’t a fan of TH beers. I had multiple times fresh forms of Green, Haze, Julius and thought the yeast was too expressive, was not a fan. Prefer to let hops shine in IPA. So could this be a personal palate preference? Idk...

 

I’ve tried the very small percentages that are mentioned in that article. There’s a rather extensive thread on another site that spawned that recipe. Started two years ago when a homebrewer who had access to PCR took the time to identify their yeast(s). Or identify something similar to what they use.

I have had some success with less phenols by adding the alternate yeasts toward the end of fermentation but still don’t think the results are even close to the esters you get from Tree House beers. I don’t really enjoy their beers that much anymore. I too find the esters so overpowering that it’s impossible to pick out the hops. Mouthfeel is still top notch and I give Nate credit for developing a “house” character that’s unlike anything else.

There’s lots of blends you can mess around with and dry yeast makes it that much easier. Certain yeasts have the ability to transform compounds from hops into completely different aromas and flavors. S-33, K-97, Bry-97 are all POF- and capable of adding some interesting complexity to an S-04 or US-05 ferment. It’s a long winding rabbit hole that I stopped fooling around with a while ago. Should try one again though for shits and giggles.

 

If you're going to add a POF+ strains to an IPA and hope to minimize the phenolic character...first off good luck — adding even a small amount of a POF+ is often enough to decarboxylate the ferulic acid found in wort. Second, I do advise a quick read of this paper if you go for it...it talks of ways to minimize ferulic extraction from grains. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/j.2050-0416.1996.tb00918.x

 

Dave, what about fermentation temperature as a variable? Would fermenting on the cooler end of the recommended fermentation temperature range produce lower amounts of phenols as one example?

Cheers!

 

Part of it seems to be time and temperature dependent...but paper only states that the decarboxylation occurs fastest at 20°C (68F). So maybe cooler ferm temp and quick turn around to try to limit the decarboxylation that can occur...? But to be honest, not sure Jack.

 

Recently I read that the phenol production doesn't increase with temperature like esters. It had to do with the clove to banana balance in a German Wheat beer.

 

So just chatting with a guy from Fermentis, he said he would not use T-58 as it grows so fast that it could easily dominate the beer with phenolics. WB-06 is both POF+ and a diastaticus strains. He suggested using S-33, S-04, or K-97 (so basically in agreement with @wasatchback's findings)

 

Dave, in the clone of Tree House Julius (BYO October 2016) you listed for the yeast:

"Wyeast 1318 (London Ale III) or White Labs WLP022 (Essex Ale) or Wyeast 1335 (British Ale II) yeast"

Did you have a source for listing those three yeast strains above? Did somebody from Tree House suggest them to you? Do you happen to know today (2019) what exactly is the yeast strain(s) used by Tree House when they brew Julius?

Cheers!

 

Hey Jack, this unfortunately was strictly from my own test batches and nope, none quite reached the ester levels and pillow-iness like the real Julius, and I only tried the two wyeast strains and nottingham...nottingham was the least interesting of the three, 1318 the most interesting. I did connect with the Nate at Treehouse via email and he said he'd be willing to help at the first exchange, but unfortunately I never heard back with answers to any of my questions. Not saying that out of bitterness or anything, they've got a great thing going and understand keeping things close to the chest. I was interested to see that he suggested using a chico strain in the IPA recipe Nate gave to CB&B.

 

Dave, I know all about reaching out to industry folks asking technical questions and they just ignore your information requests.

Cheers!