From The Yeast Bay. I just made a Saison with it, but it's still in primary. I was really excited because I was told this was the "clean" strain that Fantome uses, but I don't think that is accurate. Anyone know for sure?
No, I don't think it is. I'm not sure what Dany uses, but I wouldn't call the Wallonian clean in any way, very spicy and herbal. Not sure on the origin. I've made 3 beers with Wallonian so far, actually drinking one right now. It's ok, but all my beers with it have turned out with a stronger alcohol flavor character than I care for. I've tried a few different pitch/ferm temps and all have been about the same.
I brewed a rye saison of OG 1.068 which fermented down to 1.004. Started off at about 70° and let it free rise to something in the low 80s. Straight out of primary, it was high on the fusels with a strong pear and spice component. It calmed down a bit after a few weeks in the bottle, but I can't say it was something I'd want to brew again on its own. Funny thing was, I racked half the batch onto summer flame peaches with the dregs of Allagash Golden Brett and it came out wonderful. Everything wrong with it seems to have gotten cleaned up during secondary.
Nick from The Yeast Bay here! A lot of people have had really great success with this yeast in saison/farmhouse style beers. If you want some good information, you can check out one of our beta tester's blogs: http://www.alesoftheriverwards.com/2014/04/the-yeast-bay-wallonian-farmhouse-strain.html I believe that he also added some of our brett strains into the one Wallonian Farmhouse fermented beer he made, so you can probably email him directly to see where they're at and when he might post about that experiment. Cheers!
