Roguer's Blind Tripel Tasting

Chris,

For your consideration:

“Westmalle shares its yeast strain with the monks at Westvleteren.”

http://allaboutbeer.com/westmalle/

“For replicating the malty and estery Westvleteren and Achel beers, use the Westmalle strains: Wyeast 3787 and White Labs WLP530. Both abbeys received assistance from Westmalle when they began brewing and continue to receive yeast from them on brew day.”

https://byo.com/article/yeast-strains-for-belgian-strong-ales/

So, according to the above the yeast strain used at Westvleteren is the Westmalle yeast strain.

And then according to Stan Hieronymus (with emphasis by me):

“Stan Hieronymus Says:
October 18th, 2010 at 4:00 pm
Brian – Most monasteries use the same yeast for bottling as for fermentation. Orval uses a little of the primary, but also Brettanomyces, both dosed inline.

even though St. Bernardus is a secular brewery (even though they actually use the original Westvleteren strain), i severely doubt they would culture two strains. only one way to tell though. if your beer is missing the signature belgian esters, you will know... please report back!”

So, it would seem that St Bernardus is brewed using “the original Westvleteren strain” which implies a differing strain than is currently used by Westvleteren which is the Westmalle strain.

Perhaps you can do some ‘digging’ and confirm (or refute) the above.

Cheers!

 

Yeah - that's been my understanding.

 

I enjoyed this thread! I am not a big Tripel fan and Golden Monkey is one of those beers I need to be in the mood for but do enjoy it occasionally (although even the "new" recipe still comes off as having a little too much in the spice dept. for me). Have you ever tried New Belgium's? It's good but was noticeably hoppier to me and when I looked it up it most certainly was (43 IBUs):

https://www.newbelgium.com/beer/trippel/

 

I'll just chime in to add to the chorus regarding Golden Monkey; the last time I had it was a pleasant surprise, and there did seem to be an improvement.

Great job on the thread, @Roguer !

 

Do you have a theory on why so many homebrewers do not achieve a high attenuation (low FG value)? Do you think it is because they have a 'prejudice' about brewing with sugars?

For my last batch of Tripel using Wyeast 3787, a warm ferment (70 degrees F) and using 1.5 lbs. of table sugar I achieved a final gravity of 1.009 which is basically my target (which was 1.010).

Cheers!

P.S. The OG was 1.083.

 

I didn't realize I had a reputation for that. I certainly wouldn't be bothered by any tag (if anything, they are flattering rather than an annoyance), but it's a given I'd see your thread anyway.

 

I found that either they don't have a high enough cell count by either not making a big enough starter or pitching enough yeast. Many homebrewers do not have the ability to do a cell count (myself included) and just guess on the amount of yeast to pitch. Similarly the fermentation could stall out and they may not can get it started again, or they don't check the gravity like they should. The one I made that I posted yesterday I used WLP530 and came in at 1.088 and finished at 1.010. I used two 1L starters as well as an additional pack of yeast plus a quarter vial of Ultra-ferm. It still got stuck around 1.016 so I added a bit more Ultra-ferm and fermentation picked back up

 

I would like to know more about how these strains differ and why Westvleteren started using a different strain. Surely their current strain can't be too terribly different than their previous. I guess I have more research and tasting to do

 

Please share what you learn.

The whole topic of which yeast strains are used can be quite a vexing topic. For example I quoted Stan Hieronymus above on the topic of the St. Bernardus yeast strain but that information is from 2010 (so, ten years ago). Is this information accurate for how they brew now?

I got to know one of the employees of Fermentis pretty well at and at HomebrewCon 2019 I tried to learn more about the source of a number of their yeast strains (particularly T-58). He did not provide any additional information to me; I believe he did not know the details on what I was asking.

Some beer industry people view yeast strains as being proprietary information and rightly so.

I always viewed the yeast source information on the Mr. Malty website as being one 'data point' but not always 100% across the board factual.

Best of luck to you with your investigation here.

Cheers!

 

I used to work for White Labs and they were big on not releasing the origin of their yeast strains although some were pretty obvious to figure out. They didn't even tell the employees the origins.

 

Fermentis appears to be the same.

I get the business aspects here.There is quite bit of development work to produce these yeast strain products so...

Cheers!

 

But going back to the post that started this side discussion - with you mentioning that St Bernardus uses yeast from Westmalle. St Bernardus is happy to state that their yeast came from St Sixtus / Westvleteren, but I wasn't suggesting that you are wrong. Maybe you made a slip, but I suppose it's possible that the St Sixtus yeast came from Westmalle a century before providing their yeast to St Bernardus. Regardless of whether any lineage like this actually matters in practice, I have never read anything about the origin of the Westvleteren yeast from the 1800s. Any thoughts?

 

@Roguer Have you ever used black glasses for these? Just asking cause you “guessed by appearance” for golden monkey. I got a cheap set and it’s so crazy not being able to see it. It adds another fun layer. Cool post and thanks for sharing.

 

Whenever I do these kinds of things I like to throw a wildcard in there to keep myself honest; in this case the wildcard would actually be a blend of all 3 or 4 of the beers that I'm comparing.

 

never thought to do this as a wildcard. That’s a very good idea.

 

More often than not it throws enough of a monkey wrench into the works to do its job. The blend even took the prize once or twice, so you never know what will happen.

 

I love me some Belgian tripels... cant find enough of them

 

Westveteren's yeast source from the 1800s is something I'm not very familiar with either. My slip is where I didn't realize that St. Bernardus is using St. Sixtus's original strain and thought these two monasteries as well as Westmalle were using the same yeast strain. I knew the three had a connection with yeast but apparently I was slightly off. Back to the original strain from St. Sixtus, in the 1800s I would like to find more information on that myself and perhaps make that a summer project.