Strong Belgian beers improve your microbiome

Wonder if Trader Joe's Vintage Ale (Belgian Strong Dark, from Unibroue) would have similar yeast characteristics. I'd rather drink kombucha than Hoegaardweiser.

 

I feel like this idea gets recycled every year or two. Doesn't seem to have saved Belgian beer sales in the US unfortunately

 

Need a home brewer fact checker…. Article Says that Belgian beers are fermented 2x unlike I other beers and the 2nd fermentation uses a different yeast strain? That doesn’t sound right to me, I mean I’ve heard of bottle conditioning but I’ve got friends that homebrew Belgian beers and that 2x fermentation process And introducing a 2nd yeast strain has never come up in conversation.

 

So, I'm thinking that this article is based on the fact that Belgian sour beers often involve lactic acid bacteria (like in yogurt, sauerkraut, and kimchi), as well as Brettanomyces yeast strains in some instances. The author is a moron that made a blanket statement to include all Belgian beers, and misunderstood bottle conditioning as being fermented twice.

 

They also called a <5% abv beer "strong".

 

So far as introducing a second yeast strain for bottle conditioning, some breweries will filter out the original yeast strain and use a neutral yeast strain to bottle condition both to keep other brewers from culturing up their strain and give the appearance of a yeasty brew (many German Hefeweizen brewers do this with lager yeast), or to use an alcohol tolerant strain that only consumes the simplest of sugars once the original yeast has pooped out (British brewers often do this, homebrewers use CBC-1 for this). Adding an additional strain that could eat sugars the primary strain can't presents the possibility of explosive bottles. Homebrewers will sometimes bottle with an additional dose of Brettanomyces, but it's only considered safe if the terminal gravity is around 1* plato or less and has been stable for at least a week or so, and even then, after temperatures have been slowly increased to try to get the yeast to eat as much as it can.

 

I doubt this article would change anyone's minds. Especially since it is both poorly written and factually incorrect.

 

Yep, some of the Belgian strains are quite special, and have a lot in common with German Hefeweizen strains. Some are their own thing altogether. Did you know that the Rochefort strain is more genetically similar to most English ale strains than it is to any other Belgian Strain? Did you know that the Duvel strain is a mutated Scottish strain? That many saison strains are thought to be red wine yeasts that have a mutation making them able to process complex sugars? Making a blanket statement about Belgian yeast in a bite-sized article is a disservice to the wonder of Belgian brewing.

 

Also, with the exception of lambics, most Belgian styles can trace their modern origins to the early 1900s at the earliest.

 

The second fermentation would produce co2 and bottle condition the beer. Breweries do often use a dedicated yeast strain for bottle conditioning; but the article has it backwards, the acid producing yeast would be used for primary fermentation and a lager or neutral ale strain would be used for bottle conditioning. This is one way to keep unique yeast strains proprietary and also prevent over attenuation and gushing bottles that may sit on a warm shelf for long periods.
I’ve heard that the alcohol in beer nullifies any of the probiotic benefits of bottle conditioned beer which makes sense to me, but I’ve been unsuccessful finding good literature on that subject.

 

https://www.beeradvocate.com/commun...ian-beer-might-be-a-form-of-self-care.666310/

Maybe I was just recalling the story from the last time it popped up here.