re: Homebrewing Thread: Volume II

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Realize that the world of kveik is just as diverse as the world of regular brewers yeast. There are tons of kveik strains that do all sorts of different things.

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Someone in one of the Kveik facebook groups gave me this link to all the different strains.

Farmhouse Yeast Registry

I believe Garshol put it together. It's a bit overwhelming. I'll probably transfer this to a spreadsheet and write out styles that could go well with the descriptors and see how they pan out.

Update: My Maine Brewing Peeper Pale Ale clone was kegged yesterday. Did a gravity measurement, FG is 1.009 @ 38, right on target. Tasted and smelled it. This smells and tastes fantastic. I get LOADS of tropical fruit in this thing. It was generously hopped with Citra, Medusa, and Sabro. I have it force carb'd right now @ 30 psi, and will drop it to about 14-15 psi before i put it in the kegerator. I'm hoping to put it on tap for my sons bday party tomorrow, we'll see. But, if this turns out like i think it will, this may be my new go to Pale Ale.

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I have some sabro, but I've never used them before. Are they like super coconutty, or just a little coconutty? Would they pair well with Cascade and FF?

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I've never used FF before. Not sure how they would do with Cascade, as cascade is more floral. Sabro lends a nice soft tropical fruit/stone fruit flavor. I've only ever paired it with a neomexicanus variety or citra/galaxy/bru-1 type of hops.

If i was designing a recipe, i wouldn't purposefully put cascade, FF, and Sabro together. But if it's all you have, try it out.

I’m not sure if there is any yeast that will ferment at 40 degrees? You typically start it in the upper 60s and gradually lower it. I’m not sure it would work.

I used Kveik for a Mexican lager once. I threw the whole batch out. I learned Kveik needed to be hot. It would not ferment at 70 degrees. I had to put a heater on it for it to take off. It was definitely not “clean” but I may have fricked something up. That’s my experience with Kveik.

72 and sunny right now. Probably a couple degrees cooler in the garage and mid forties at the coldest at night. Looks like low seventies as the highs for next week. Maybe I can just do an easy pale ale. I've got columbus, cascade, citra, sabro laying around and a nice culture of omega 004.

bug how did your pale ale clone end up? I decided to brew a pale ale this weekend and use my kegerator/ fermentation chamber for it and let the oktoberfast come back to RT. I have heard that some people do this and just fill growlers and stick them in the fridge for a while. I think its more important to have a stable fermentation temp then have cold beer at my fingertips. Been tracking the temps in the garage and they've been 76 during the day and mid 60s at night. My chico yeast tops out at 73 on the high side so I would rather not risk ester formation especially because ambient temps are going to be a little higher this weekend.

I've adapted brulosophy's hop chronicles pale ale recipes (base malt with 5% vienna) with a ton of cascade. 1.75oz for 60 min, 1oz with 5 min left, 1oz at flameout, and a 2 oz dry hop. Sound good? Are yall dry hopping with a few days left in the fermenter, at high krausen, after krausen drops like biotrans, or what. I've been reading brulosophy experiments where they've hopped at yeast pitch vs 3 day and day 3 of fermentation vs day 9. Their experiments seemed to yield that late dry hopping produced danker beer, but I'm not sure thats what I need in a west coast PA.

SOUR BEER UPDATE (for those that are interested):

I bottled my biere de garde about a month ago (another L'internationale project recipe), and have now had 2 or 3 bottles of it so far. I love this beer. The darker malt bill lends itself to some caramel sweetness. This beer was blended 60/40 sour/brett beer. The sour beer was the same recipe brewed a year ago, with some lactic acid bacteria added. Then blended with the newer BDG recipe. However this batch was only a Sach/Brett fermented beer, no LABs. The acidity is not overpowering at all, and seems to envelope your whole tongue. It's fantastic!




And i blended my sours a couple days ago and dry hopped them. I now have 10 gallons of sour beer to bottle. Technically, i could bottle 18 gallons, as i have 2 additional sours in the sour beer closet that are ready, but i will let them go longer. I haven't decided if i will bottle the 2 sours this Sunday or wait another week. My bottling brett vials came in the mail yesterday, i'm using 2 vials of the Yeast Bay Amalgamation II.

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Amalgamation II is a blend of 5 Brettanomyces bruxellensis isolates that showcases qualities of each isolate: The balanced funk of the Beersel isolates and TYB184, the SweeTarts™ character of TYB207, and the tropical bouquet of lemon, pineapple, guava, mango and papaya esters contributed by TYB261.

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The 2 beers being bottled are:

L'internationale Saison: LINK This is now my 3rd batch. I love this beer. The hops differ slightly with each batch, but i am for very citrusy/lemony hops when making this. I typically make 5 gallons of a saison, then blend it with 1 gallon of a mixed ferm sour i have aging. It's a perfect example of a summer saison. This beer is now on regular rotation. And, the good part, is that it's a mixed fermentation beer, that doesn't take a year before it is ready. I go from grain to glass anywhere from 4-6 months with this beer as long as i have a stock of mixed ferm sour available.

The other beer being packaged got it's inspiration from 2 different beers. Jester King Noble King, and NOLA Sauvage. I used the JK Noble King recipe, LINK, but wanted it to have some malt character and be a bit darker, similar to NOLA's sauvage. Sauvage is an all brett beer, with no lactic acid bacteria, however the acidity, comes from the brett. Brett tends to produce lactic acid when exposed to oxygen. So i took the Noble King recipe, and added in some Caramunich malt. Followed the same hop schedule, primaried with WY3724 Belgian Saison strain, and then added a variety of brett vials i had in my fridge that were either about to get old, or i couldn't figure out a use for them. I used 3 vials of brett from the Yeast bay, TYB207, TYB184, and Lochristi Brett (if you notice the amalgamation II blend has all of these blends in it. Could have saved myself some money by just using that, lol), and 1 pack of Bootleg Biology Funk Weapon #3. This beer sat for about 3 months and the FG is at 1.004. This is EXACTLY what i was trying to get out of this beer. Good complexity of brett and some slight acidity. I debated on whether to blend this beer, or just package as is. So i compromised and blended 5 gallons of this beer, with 1/2 gallon of a sour, just in case my pallate was being fooled.

The other 2 beers that are ready for bottling, but will wait are:

The remainder of the Biere de Garde batches. So the first batch was a 60/40 sour BDG to brett BDG blend. Well this one is a 60/40 Brett BDG to sour BDG, added on top of 12-15 lbs of sour cherries that have been aging for over a month now. It's got a real pretty burgundy color.

The other, is 3 gallons of the remnants of the 2 beers being bottled this weekend or next. The sour beer used to blend with the other 2 batches was in a 3 gallon fermenter. To get the correct blend proportions, i removed beer from each of the 2 batches and set it aside, then blended in the sour beer into those fermenters. That left me with 1/2 gallon of the sour beer. So i took the 2.5 gallons from the 2 batches, and racked on top of the sour beer dregs. All 3 of these beers had low final gravities, so i don't expect much, if any refermentation to happen. I'll let it sit for a few weeks. I will more than likely add fruit to this, once i determine the flavor profile after it rests a bit. May use blackberries at a rate of 2 - 3 lbs/gallon and just see what happens.

SOUR BEER BREW SCHEDULE:

All of that being said, i'm down to not much beer left in the sour beer pipeline. I have 6 gallons of a solera batch, that to be honest, could also be bottled, but i'm going to hold off for now. And then with the biere de garde, the saison, and now the Noble King brett beer clone all being excellent beers, these may now be regular beers with relatively short turnaround i could continuously brew. And seeing as i do need acidity for these beers, i'll probably just pull from the solera as my acid base for these blends. But, in the meantime, here are the beers i will be brewing.

Golden Ale Sour Base - I have the dregs to my first ever sour saison. I will use this as my sour beer base. I just need to brew a 5 gallon batch and add the 1 gallon dregs and let it do it's thing. 1 year until ready for blending.
Amber Ale Sour Base - Similar to above, except will be used for darker beers, maybe. I'm still researching if this is necessary, or if i could use the golden sour base for darker beers. I don't see why i couldn't, i've done it before.
L'internationale Saison
L'internationale Biere de Garde
Bring on da Funk (Noble King/Sauvage Clone)
Lambic/Gueuze - I also plan to brew a lambic. Debating on doing the turbid mash thing or not. I don't think i have enough pots to do a turbid mash, but we'll see. I've also read that turbid mash is not necessary given the quality of malts nowadays. I will brew this in the winter when it gets colder, and will make a few attempts at a wild capture. My brother and I want to brew this at my mawmaw's old house. The house is getting demolished, but she lived on the bayou bank of my hometown. There is a big sycamore tree and a nice flat area near the bank, that would be a good spot to brew this beer. I may brew the lambic batch at home, and brew a 5 gallon batch at mawmaw's house, and split the 5 gallons into jars and place around the property in hopes of picking up something wild. Was thinking of at least 5 different spots to place it: Near the bayou, on top of the indian mound (she lived next to an indian mound), next to where her old garden used to be, near the banana magnolia tree, and 1 other. I want to brew this beer around the same time every year, and after 3 or 4 years, blend these beers and make a gueuze.

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I have one of those metal tea straining balls that might help avoid hops clogging up the dip tube.

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I bought a few of those and used them once. They didn't hold much hops at all. Remember, the pellets will expand when they get wet. The expansion broke a few of the teaballs. I ended up trashing them and bought some of these filters. Works fantastic, both for keg hopping (on the dip tube), and racking from the fermenter for a hop heavy beer, or a fruited beer.

LINK







A tip though, if using with a sterile siphon starter (pictured below), you'll need to trim the filter down. I cut a few inches from the top with some scissors so the filter will fit all the way into the fermenter. Also, remove the red plug cap at the bottom of the siphon starter, if not you'll likely have some stuck transfers.

Bottling day. Bottling up the 2 sours I mentioned earlier. Hope I cleaned enough bottles for 10 gallons of beer.

ETA: ended up getting exactly 60 bottles, about 1/2 bombers and 1/2 500 and 375 mL. Both beers bottles with the Yeast Bay amalgamation II.