Got the wrong yest

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lyacovett

lyacovett

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I want to brew a farmhouse ale. I went to LHBS and got the wrong yeast. I grabbed to wrong sheet of paper, and had some yeasts on it for a wit recipe I wrote down for a friend. So I have WLP400 now.

What can I do with this yeast other than a wit?? Could I possibly still do a farmhouse ale with it??

Thanks.
 
you can do whatever you want with it... i actually heard a cool interview with allagash brewing recently and they use a yeast similar to wlp400 for most of their beers. i say go for it, that yeast produces some nice characteristics, i bet it will yield a very tasty beer that you could still certainly call a farmhouse ale.
 
I agree with the 'droid, lots of the pros will use wit yeast as their "workhorse" belgian beer.

Might not dry out quite as far though. maybe mash a little low in the spectrum?
 
What about ferm temps? Farmhouse ales are generally fermented hot (in the 90's). Should I go ahead and ferment that hot with this yeast, or would that be a bad idea?
 
Personally, I think that is a bad idea even with the farmhouse yeast. It's asking for any little thing that wouldn't usually cause off flavors in your brewery to thrive.

Its my understanding that the old saison strains needed that to hit proper attenuation.

I fermented a wit and a belgian blonde at normal ale temps recently with wyeast's witbier yeast, got good yeast character in both beers and slightly higher than 75% attenuation on beers that mashed hotter than a typical saison.
 
I wrote an email to white labs, and this is the response:

Normally, the WLP565 (or WLP566 when available) would be the yeast
strain of choice when making a farmhouse ale, but the WLP400 should work out
OK as well, especially if you ferment it warm to encourage the
ester/phenolic formation. Just be careful that your gravity doesn't get too
high or you run the risk of creating a lot of the fusel alcohols at the
higher temperatures as well. Just remember that as homebrewers, there's
really nothing that is out of bounds!

Good luck and happy brewing!

Pretty much exactly what was already said. So "warm" fermentation it is ..... not really sure what exactly that means, but I'm thinking around 80 should work out.

Now off to create a recipe ..... never done one of these before, .... any recommendations?
 
lyacovett said:
I wrote an email to white labs, and this is the response:

Normally, the WLP565 (or WLP566 when available) would be the yeast
strain of choice when making a farmhouse ale, but the WLP400 should work out
OK as well, especially if you ferment it warm to encourage the
ester/phenolic formation. Just be careful that your gravity doesn't get too
high or you run the risk of creating a lot of the fusel alcohols at the
higher temperatures as well. Just remember that as homebrewers, there's
really nothing that is out of bounds!

Good luck and happy brewing!

Pretty much exactly what was already said. So "warm" fermentation it is ..... not really sure what exactly that means, but I'm thinking around 80 should work out.

Now off to create a recipe ..... never done one of these before, .... any recommendations?
Click to expand...

keep in mind that at 80-90 you are going to be maximizing your ester/phenol production...this is what you may want since you originally were looking to do a Farmhouse ale. However, if you aren't looking for over the top ester/phenol production, you may want to go a little cooler for a fermentation temp.

Another option would be to start out the fermentation a little cooler, then warm it up as active fermentation slows down.

good luck!
 
How does this look?

Not sure about the hops. On hand I have Cascade, centennial, columbus and willamette. Also not sure if I should add any aroma hops.

Batch Size: 5.500 gal
Boil Size: 6.750 gal
Boil Time: 0.000 s
Efficiency: 70%
OG: 1.059
FG: 1.015
ABV: 5.7%
Bitterness: 27.5 IBUs (Tinseth)
Color: 9 SRM (Mosher)

Fermentables

Pale Malt (2 Row) UK Grain 10.500 lb Yes No 78% 3 L
Munich Malt - 20L Grain 2.000 lb Yes No 75% 20 L
Turbinado Sugar 1.000 lb No No 96% 10 L

Hops
Name Alpha Amount Use Time Form IBU
Willamette 5.0% 2.000 oz Boil 1.000 hr Pellet 27.5

Yeast

Wyeast - Belgian Witbier Ale

Mash
149.000 F 1.000 hr
 

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