WLP 665 - Flemish Ale Blend

Just picked up a vial of this today. I have a stout I brewed up nearly three weeks ago that got stuck at about 1.030, ( SG 1.046'ish),. Initially fermented with the NW Ale strain from Wyeast. I then pitched rehydrated s04, also to no avail. After serious consideration, I've decided against pitching standard sach again and just souring this emmer-effer.

Long story short, I will be souring a stout with this new release.

Are they calling 665 "Flemish Ale Blend" now?

wlp665 is new...are you confused by thinking he wrote wlp655 which is the sour mix 1?

Ah yes, my morning eyes...

I had the same thing happen with a stout didnt finish where I wanted it to. So yesterday I put Roeselare into it.
I am nervous because it did have 50 IBU's .

NEED to use my vial soon. I have an Oud Bruin on the schedule, but have been tempted to do a blonde instead.

Just pitched a fresh vial 2 days ago into a 44 SRM "Oud Zwarte" (black instead of brown 'cause it's darker). Anyways, 1 day lag and its kicking off belgian esters at around 75F with a beautiful kreusen. I am super excited. Also, would love to try roeselare (which does not contain brett whereas 665 does and therefore makes it more authentic for an oud bruin?) but my LHBS said they never had the demand for wyeast so they only stock white labs.

loftybrewer said:

Also, would love to try roeselare (which does not contain brett whereas 665 does and therefore makes it more authentic for an oud bruin?) but my LHBS said they never had the demand for wyeast so they only stock white labs.

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Roeselare does have brett:

"Specific proportions of a Belgian style ale strain, a sherry strain, two Brettanomyces strains, a Lactobacillus culture, and a Pediococcus culture produce the desirable flavor components of these beers as they are brewed in West Flanders."

My next brew is 10 gallons of Flanders red, I'm going to split WLP665 and Roeselare.

BootsyFlanootsy said:

Just picked up a vial of this today. I have a stout I brewed up nearly three weeks ago that got stuck at about 1.030, ( SG 1.046'ish),. Initially fermented with the NW Ale strain from Wyeast. I then pitched rehydrated s04, also to no avail. After serious consideration, I've decided against pitching standard sach again and just souring this emmer-effer.

Long story short, I will be souring a stout with this new release.

Click to expand...

You can always just add a single brett strain and hope it doesn't dry out too far. I've started brewing an annual imperial stout with the wyeast old ale blend brett. This is the second year.

I'll be using 665 for the first time, and I'm wondering if I need to aerate the wort prior to pitching? I'm new to souring so I'm not sure, especially since there is some sacch in the 665 blend.

Aerate as normal since you want the sacch to do its normal thing before the bugs take over.

I'd say depends on quality/gravity of wort and desired yeast ester level. I did a no-aeration whitelabs brett-C pitch once, took it 3 days to get going but man was it a good beer. (Scored a 42 @ peachstate brew off in specialty beer category) While I would give this one a year to ferment, the bugs are anaerobic and I recommend facilitating their growth for maximum sourness and maximum ester from yeast (though the vial is getting old now, so shaking the carboy a bit may be enough)

smokinghole said:

You can always just add a single brett strain and hope it doesn't dry out too far. I've started brewing an annual imperial stout with the wyeast old ale blend brett. This is the second year.

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Can you describe the taste you got last year and how long it fermented? I've never tasted a bretted old ale or bretted imperial stout.

BTW, I started an old ale with the wyeast old ale blend a couple of weeks ago, actually 2 packs of it. The OG was 1.085. I had it in a plastic bucket and I just couldn't keep the lid on it before I had to go to work in the morning, even with a blowoff tube, so I just pulled the stopper out and let the yeast bubble up and spill onto the lid for about 8 hours. Could be infected, but maybe not. I'll taste it in a week or so when I put it into a glass carboy.

Anyway, what's it taste like?

I got a slight cherry flavor with no noticeable brett funk to be honest. The beer fermented from 1.117 to 1.024 in about 7 months. I bottled it in September but has not picked up any carbonation despite being priming sugar dosed. I will be popping the top of at least half a case and force carbonating for Christmas as gifts the rest I believe will build carb due to the brett. My other option will be to get a brett starter active and add that into the remaining bottles.

The stout was intensely bitter and roasty so the traditional brett flavors that I got in my old ale with the same blend are subdued.

Thundercougarfalconbird said:

I'd say depends on quality/gravity of wort and desired yeast ester level. I did a no-aeration whitelabs brett-C pitch once, took it 3 days to get going but man was it a good beer. (Scored a 42 @ peachstate brew off in specialty beer category) While I would give this one a year to ferment, the bugs are anaerobic and I recommend facilitating their growth for maximum sourness and maximum ester from yeast (though the vial is getting old now, so shaking the carboy a bit may be enough)

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You make a good point. A more dextrinous and/or high level of adjuncts wort would theoretically NOT favor saccharomyces. My wort will be 74% Vienna/Munich for base malts and plan to mash at about 155, so I think normal aeration will work for me. I tend to like a little less sourness also.

something that didn't occur to me when I pitched this blend into my stuck-fermented stout was that the IBU level was pretty high, upwards toward 43.

I'm guessing that I'm going to see little if any sourness out of this.

Dang.

Don't be surprised. The ECY cultures have some hop tolerant bacteria. I did a 8.5% dubbel with 35ibus and it soured nicely (though unintentionally) from what I suspect to be a contaminated ECY09 culture.

I hear ya, but Al's blends tend to be more potent than anything I've seen from white labs.

At the least, hopefully the brett will ferment it out fully, at which point, I'm thinking a wee smidge of oak and a good 1.5 to 2#'s of sour cherries per gallon will be in order.

Finally brewed mine yesterday. I'd had the vials for a few months, so I pitched two and a packet of saf-05. Not much going on yet, but preemptive swamp cooling chilled the wort to low 60s overnight. Should be rocking when it warms back up a little.

Year round strain in 2013!