belgian beers without belgian yeasts

people,

i'm planning on brewing a belgian dubbel for a homebrew contest. Problem is, we don't have any white labs or wyeast yeasts commercially available here in brazil (liquid yeasts are still lacking on sanitary license), so my only options are:

1) use a dry yeast from fermentis (s-33 or t-58 are the options that come to mind)
2) propagate from a bottle (chimay, rochefort, la trappe and westmalle are the options)

I never took yeast from bottles and from what i'm reading, it's quite complicated and with dubious results. On the other hand, although both s-33 and t-58 are sold has belgian-style yeasts, I read from a lot of comments that they lack the true profile expected for dubbels, tripels and so on.

So, what would YOU do in my place?

If I propagate, my initial idea is to take the dregs off the bottle and put it in my enlemeyer with 400-500 ml of a 1050 SG wort made with only pilsen malt. I do this small-quantity wort by simply grinding the malt in a blender, adding water at saccharifiation-temperature, waiting for about 1 1/2 hour, boiling and cooling it. Is that enough for the yeast to grow or must I do something else?

LuizArgh said:

I never took yeast from bottles and from what i'm reading, it's quite complicated and with dubious results.

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It's no more complicated than making ANY kind of a yeast starter, except that you flame or sanitize the bottle before you empty the dregs.

And I can't recall ever having one not take off.

So, what would YOU do in my place?

If I propagate, my initial idea is to take the dregs off the bottle and put it in my enlemeyer with 400-500 ml of a 1050 SG wort made with only pilsen malt. I do this small-quantity wort by simply grinding the malt in a blender, adding water at saccharifiation-temperature, waiting for about 1 1/2 hour, boiling and cooling it. Is that enough for the yeast to grow or must I do something else?

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I would step it up over a few days, and I also would pitch from multiple bottles to increase the initial yeast count. I harvested hoegarden recently by using a dozen bottles. In the interum I sanitized them, left some beer in them, put a new cap on them and kept them in the fridge for a few days until I had enough to pitch.

Now having said that, you really don't need to make a pilsner mash to harvest the yeast. Just use extralight dme, you're going to be decanting the starter beer off anyway, so it doesn't really matter that the starter was made with pilsner malt or not. I didn't when I harvest the hoeagaarden, I just used plain ole dme, even though I am going to use it in a pils/wheat mix...but doing it with DME won't affect the overall yeast after you harvest it.

If you want to make your own pils wort, fine, but that's really over complicating things.

I recently propagated from an Ommegang bottle. What I read is to start out in the bottle. I just made up some wort from DME and poured it in there. I don't have a stir plate or flask, so I then decanted the "beer" off when it finished fermenting and repeated until I had done it a few times. After each fermentation I put it in the fridge to help the yeast flocculate and settle on the bottom. I had no problem using this yeast, just also use some yeast nutrient.

You will know if it is working and if it doesn't you could always have some dry yeast available.

I say give it a try and if it doesn't work out you have some dry yeast on hand.

One thing I forgot, start with a weaker low OG wort to give the yeast something easy at first to bring out of dormancy. The second and third time I did a bit more to get them ready for the high OG beer I was gong to make.

I started with OG around 1.030 and then stepped up to 1.055. The beer I ended up making with it was at 1.080.

If you want to make your own pils wort, fine, but that's really over complicating things.

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actually, no.
we don't have DME/LME in here... except for a very suspicious extract we find at some natural stores and and muntons extract cans, which are, considering import taxes and all, WAY too expensive for me.

i thought about the pilsener malt because i thought that, being somewhat "neutral" on the flavour, it would not impart any wort character on the yeast - that, let's say, an over-hopped stout wort would. Does this makes any sense or am I just worrying about the wrong things?

I recently propagated from an Ommegang bottle. What I read is to start out in the bottle. I just made up some wort from DME and poured it in there. I don't have a stir plate or flask, so I then decanted the "beer" off when it finished fermenting and repeated until I had done it a few times.

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this is the part I don't get it. If you put a high gravity wort on a beer bottle with yeast and cap it, the resulting pressure after the initial fermenting phase would not be enough to create a hand granade?

oh, and a trappist bottle is also quite a luxury ($$$) here. So having multiple ones, athough possible, is quite a pain in the pocket. The four ones I mentioned, for example, I just bought as a christmas gift for myself, and STILL, I must stress: god bless credit cards.

and one more thing: if propagating is that simple, why do people talk so much about specific instuments or ingredients, like gelatin? And about this ingredient in particular, why and how is it helpfull?

LuizArgh said:

and one more thing: if propagating is that simple, why do people talk so much about specific instuments or ingredients, like gelatin? And about this ingredient in particular, why and how is it helpfull?

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I didn't realize you were from brazil and extract was hard to get.


It depends on what you mean by "propigate" or more actaully, how you intend to store it. You only need ingredients like gelatin or glycerine if you intend to freeze the yeast. You only need slants or other special gear if you intend to put the harvested yeast on plates.

But if you are harvesting and planning to pitch right away all you need is wort, and a vessel to grow your starter in. And if you have one, though not mandatory, a stirplate.

You make a wort, pour in the bottle dregs and let it grow, feed it with somoe more wort to grow large enough to pitch and pitch that in the fermenter.



And if you intend to store yeast in jars, then really all you need is sme canning or other jars, and a pot to boil steralize the jars and lids in.

Like anything in brewing there are multiple ways of doing things, from the simple to the elaborate...I tend to go for simple, make a starter wort, empty the dregs of a few bottles of the beer I am harvesting into the wort (after sanitizing the beer bottle neck with flame and starsan) then let it grow, and either pitch it in to beer or jar it in canning jars...

The jar method is similar to what's discussed in here, also if I pitch after harvesting I then of course will go ahead and wash it and jar it as well, but sometimes, I just harvest and jar for storage.;

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f163/yeast-washing-illustrated-41768/?highlight=yeast+washing

I haven't tried this, but it might work OK. This is a use what is available option if culturing from a Belgian beer is not feasible for you.

I'd do a split ferment. Same yeast, but ferment, say 1 gal at 80*F and 4 gal at 68*F, and then after fermentation is complete, blend to taste. Fermenting the whole batch at 80*F would probably be too fruity.

pjj2ba said:

I haven't tried this, but it might work OK. This is a use what is available option if culturing from a Belgian beer is not feasible for you.

I'd do a split ferment. Same yeast, but ferment, say 1 gal at 80*F and 4 gal at 68*F, and then after fermentation is complete, blend to taste. Fermenting the whole batch at 80*F would probably be too fruity.

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That is a really interesting idea....

pjj2ba said:

I haven't tried this, but it might work OK. This is a use what is available option if culturing from a Belgian beer is not feasible for you.

I'd do a split ferment. Same yeast, but ferment, say 1 gal at 80*F and 4 gal at 68*F, and then after fermentation is complete, blend to taste. Fermenting the whole batch at 80*F would probably be too fruity.

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I would go with this option.

The problem not yet mentioned is that many Belgian breweries use two different yeast. One for the original fermentation, and another for the 're-fermentation' in the bottle. By culturing yeast from a Chimay bottle you will not get the yeast Chimay uses for primary fermentation. Both Micheal Jackson (in Great Beers of Belgium) and Stan Hieronymus (in Brew Like a Monk) mention this. I am not sure of all of the breweries that do this, but i know Chimay does, as do a few others (names not coming off the top of my head)

Seems like a lot of work for an unknown tasting yeast strand to me...

cford1 said:

I would go with this option.

The problem not yet mentioned is that many Belgian breweries use two different yeast. One for the original fermentation, and another for the 're-fermentation' in the bottle. By culturing yeast from a Chimay bottle you will not get the yeast Chimay uses for primary fermentation. Both Micheal Jackson (in Great Beers of Belgium) and Stan Hieronymus (in Brew Like a Monk) mention this. I am not sure of all of the breweries that do this, but i know Chimay does, as do a few others (names not coming off the top of my head)

Seems like a lot of work for an unknown tasting yeast strand to me...

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Actually from the source that many of us use....http://www.nada.kth.se/~alun/Beer/Bottle-Yeasts/

Chimay

General
Apparently the same strain in all three versions. Appears to be primary strain. Several have had good results. Solvent and banana flavors at high fermentation temperatures or bad yeast health? Same as Wyeast 1214 Belgian Abbey?
Red
{1} Good alcohol tolerance. Balanced phenolics. Decent attenuation.

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And this.....

Beermaker said:

I captured aRed Chimey yeast last year. I grew it and used it for my Chimey Red I sent to Vail for competition.

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cowain said:

I believe "Brew like a Monk" says that Chimay uses the same yeast for fermenting and conditioning.

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uglygoat said:

brew like a monk claims that chimay uses the same strain to bottle with as primary fermentation.

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https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f12/chimay-yeast-18357/

So I'm thinking it's worth a try....and even if it's not the fermenting strain...it's still going to be a belgian yeast (technically) And it wouldn't be too "dramatically" different from the original...maybe more neutral.

The breweries that change the strain are the ones that are still trying to keep it proprietary,,,,But Chimay has already sold their strain to Wyeast or whitelabs (I can't remember which) so they've got nothing to hide.

Ok, yup. Revvy may be right. I read it wrong. The sentence was "All have re-fermentation in the bottle, but the Triple with a different yeast." If you don't read "but the Tripel" then you get what I did.

I don't have "Brew Like a Monk" on me, so I can't say why I perhaps read that one wrong.

Oh well. Silly me. Homebrew and reading about beer don't always mix properly I guess.

Although I don't have proof that they use the same yeast, they very well might. I agree with Revvy that it'll still be Belgian and worse case is that it'll be slightly more neutral.

You can definitely culture Westmalle and Chimay from the bottle. Using all pils malt for culturing will work great... when I make big starters I use all grain, since it's cheaper than extract, I just mash in a 6-pack cooler with a paint strainer bag and boil for 45 minutes on the stove top.

LuizArgh said:

and one more thing: if propagating is that simple, why do people talk so much about specific instuments or ingredients, like gelatin? And about this ingredient in particular, why and how is it helpfull?

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As to fermenting right in the bottle, I don't cap it. I use foil or something to stop air from going in but will let the CO2 out. Maybe not the most sanitary, but it does let the strain of yeast I want build up before others are mixed with it.

People talk about specific instruments because they either like making things difficult, or like to use equipment.

If you can't get several bottles I would still give it a try. I only use one bottle and just build it up.

I do find it interesting how people are always concerned their beer is going to be infected from a small amount of wild yeast, but when trying to propagate it become impossible to "grow" more yeast in their minds. Give it a try and keep it simple. I don't see why you can't do a mini mash to get your wort for this. I only suggested DME because here is is easy to find and cost wise is fine on the small volume needed for this.

Another thought (still assuming no Belgian yeast). In addition to the split ferment at two temperatures, I'd add some wheat malt to the grain bill, maybe 1-2 lbs. I've been able to coax some nice clove out of Safale 05 in an American wheat that was fermented cold (64*F). This was 40% wheat malt, but I don't think you want to go that high if you are trying to brew a double. If you don't have access to wheat malt, you can use wheat flour (cook it first), or what I do for one of my crazy beers is to use some loaves of bread. Slice it up, let it dry for a day, and then turn it into bread crumbs and add it right to the mash. It will convert pretty well.