Rare yeast, and I'm getting ahold of some!

so you can taste the spices in the unhopped starter wort?

Yeah for sure. I'll get more of an idea on these next two I think though. Also I've not got it ramped all the way up to 40c for these, but will most certainly be doing that when I ferment the first test batch with it.

Hey, I just saw this thread:
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=545604

do you think that first strain is the one you got? It says up to 98F and its norwegian....it doesnt mention a spicy component though

m00ps said:

Hey, I just saw this thread:
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=545604

do you think that first strain is the one you got? It says up to 98F and its norwegian....it doesnt mention a spicy component though

Click to expand...

The first and the second strain I got are the same one.

I'm not really sure if that OL yeast is the same one. It certainly sounds like it just going off of the temps. I'll have to email Lars and ask him.

To give a little more update to this thread:
I brewed one of my "house" beers that I actually haven't brewed in several months because I've been trying all kinds of other styles. I call it Bashing Boundaries because it's an American wheat beer with tons of aroma hops. When I first started brewing I love American wheat beers, but quickly fell in love with the citrusy aroma hops. So I started asking around to all my homebrewer friends if the combination of the styles was possible. I always got a resounding no... Because, you know, wheats get their character from the yeast, and the hops will overpower that. Well then I heard of several craft breweries were already doing this. Long story, sorry, but that's the base I used for this beer. I opted for that because I thought it would make for an interesting base with this yeast, and because it'd been a long time since I brewed it, and because to make the traditional Vossøl takes a ton of time and effort.

It seems to be already at full krausen, so only a couple of weeks before I get an idea of what it's like. I made 25L, but my secondary is 22L (I plan to rack to a secondary to dry hop, because I want to keep the yeast harvested as clean as possible). So I'll take those extra 3L and bottle them, and then be able to compare the differences.

Sweet. I am very interestedin any new farmhouse yeast strain. So I remember you saying it's got spice, like almost xmas spices? What do you characterize the flavor profile the yeast brings in it own? I'll probably try to blend it with another saison yeast

http:// https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=542346

I'd be more than enthusiastic about trying this yeast out. I am a long term expat living in the very South of China (1 hr driving from Hong Kong, to make it easy), and although there is some time in a year that I would wear long sleeves it is usually no longer than a couple of weeks.

Seriously, most of the year temperatures are above 30C, and I would die for some good yeast that could handle this.

I haven't yet, but I am seriously going to set up a home lab as here in China there is simply no such a thing as liquid yeast and shipment time and conditions leave little chance to the yeast to survive. (Still I'm impatiently waiting for winter to order some from WL).

Anyway, I'm quite excited to try brewing with this magic thing.
I'm going to leave for the whole month of November, so I'd be happy to have a try first thing on return.

So... How can I actually put my hands on it? I mean, errrr... I might have missed it in the thread, but who do I need to write to, and how and how much do I need to pay?

Thanks!

m00ps said:

Sweet. I am very interestedin any new farmhouse yeast strain. So I remember you saying it's got spice, like almost xmas spices? What do you characterize the flavor profile the yeast brings in it own? I'll probably try to blend it with another saison yeast

http:// https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=542346

Click to expand...

you had double http:// on that link...

I emailed the lab, and it's not the same strain that I have, but is a kveik strain. It's the one that he mentions in this link as from Stranda.
http://www.garshol.priv.no/blog/329.html
http://www.garshol.priv.no/blog/296.html

The guy from the lab said that he was going to be getting the Voss strain from Lars at some point, but that it hadn't been sent yet. So be on the lookout for that, and you'll get the same strain as I've got, for way cheaper than it would cost to send it overseas!

Warthaug said:

It is cheap & easy - and that's my blog, I've sent yeast to over 100 people, so I know...
B

Click to expand...

Is out there any international yeast exchange program? In this part of the world is quite hard to get liquid yeast strains. I managed to get WLP001 and Wyeast1217 and use them for all my beers. Recently i harvested the yeast from Westmalle dubbel, so i will inculde it in my rotation
PM me if you can send my some strains, i can pay your postage in advance.

Warthaug said:

It is cheap & easy - and that's my blog, I've sent yeast to over 100 people

Click to expand...

Looks like you're the man I was looking for!
Would it be possible for me to get some soaked paper from you? (we can find the way to make us square).
I would actually prefer to have paper samples, they could be stored for more time till I get to re-inoculate the yeast.
Please PM me if anything could be done.

Hello,

I would also love to try this yeast, if possible.

If I can get ahold of some of this yeast I can propagate it and distribute it over the Iberian Penisula, if anyone else around is interested.

Let us know, joshesmusica

So I got some of the omega yeast. You're saying it's the "stranda" one from that post?

Hmm lemons nuts straw... Should go well with one of my saison yeasts. So you have tried some of these fermented very hot? I'm curious as to why omega says the flavor profile is more or less the same across a +30F span

Omega confirmed me that the hot head strain is from stranda.

Cheers!

Very cool stuff. I spent the last 2 hours reading about Norwegian and Lithuanian Farmhouse Ales.

m00ps said:

So I got some of the omega yeast. You're saying it's the "stranda" one from that post?

Hmm lemons nuts straw... Should go well with one of my saison yeasts. So you have tried some of these fermented very hot? I'm curious as to why omega says the flavor profile is more or less the same across a +30F span

Click to expand...

Yeah I had emailed the lab when I replied to you earlier with those links. I haven't tried the Stranda one, but it seems like from reading those posts that even the guys from Stranda stopped using it a while back, and pretty much use modern brewing techniques. But they just had this strain on hand. The lab apparently had a hard time resurrecting it, but ended up being able to pull out one of the strains from that "strain." Still a very cool yeast that was only used in that part of the world, until now.

I have just done a fermentation with the chamber set to 35C. It was the one I mentioned before, a hoppy american wheat with galaxy and cascade. It's been fermenting for a week now, and I was under the impression that it was a very fast worker because the guys from Voss were racking to their serving tank at day 7. But as you can see it's not quite finished (expected FG 1.013). So I'll keep it warm for another week. That sample was incredibly aromatic! I really think this is going to turn out to be a good one for sure!

I'm also planning on doing a Christmas brown ale (very traditional style here in Norway) with that one at the end of the month. I got the recipe from my step-FIL, and it was amazing last year. So I thought I'd give it a little twist and ferment with the strain that I have, the Voss strain.

The Stranda strain sounds pretty interesting, seems like it could be nice in some kind of summer ale.

cool, well I'll see what kinds of flavors it puts out in room temperature from my starter and hot temperatures from my primary.

Its crazy how fast they have traditionally turned these beers around. Even if it was drinkable at 7 days, I would think the beer would change dramatically int he next few weeks. But I guess it really captures the spirit of "farmhouse" ales

God morgen joshesmusica!

How is it going with you kveik?

Whats the end result, especially taste and attenuation.

Would you mind sharing your FIL Jule-Ol Brown Ale recipe?

best regards
Jan

juan_bernado said:

God morgen joshesmusica!

How is it going with you kveik?

Whats the end result, especially taste and attenuation.

Would you mind sharing your FIL Jule-Ol Brown Ale recipe?

best regards
Jan

Click to expand...

Actually, I went to check on it on day 14, and completely infected. Doesn't make any sense, I've been extra careful this time around with everything. I'm really starting to wonder if the guy I'm getting it from has a small infection and doesn't know it yet. I built up the starter for this batch in order to save some back. I'll propagate that bit and see what happens. My wife is currently in a biology class and has access to microscopes. So we're actually planning on take a sample there and seeing if her teacher can help us diagnose this.

But, I went ahead and kegged it. I dry hopped in the keg, hoping that would help ward of the bacteria for some time. And I'll just try to drink it as quickly as possible, then I'll take apart the keg and do a very thorough cleaning of every single small part, and like replace any rubber.

Here is the recipe for the current kegged batch, if anybody's interested. I highly recommend this hop combo!:

Batch Size (fermenter): 25.00 l
Bottling Volume: 24.17 l
Estimated OG: 1.061 SG
Estimated Color: 12.8 EBC
Estimated IBU: 19.3 IBUs
Brewhouse Efficiency: 60.00 %
Est Mash Efficiency: 64.6 %
Boil Time: 60 Minutes

Ingredients:
------------
Amt Name Type # %/IBU
3.50 kg Pale Malt, Maris Otter (Thomas Fawcett) Grain 1 43.8 %
3.50 kg Wheat Malt, Ger (3.9 EBC) Grain 2 43.8 %
0.30 kg Acidulated (BestMalz) (3.0 EBC) Grain 3 3.8 %
0.30 kg Caramel Light (BestMalz) (30.0 EBC) Grain 4 3.8 %
0.30 kg Wheat, Flaked (3.2 EBC) Grain 5 3.8 %
0.10 kg Caramel Dark (BestMalz) (90.0 EBC) Grain 6 1.2 %
15.00 g Pacific Gem [15.00 %] - Boil 60.0 min Hop 7 14.3 IBUs
20.00 g Cascade [5.50 %] - Boil 5.0 min Hop 8 1.4 IBUs
20.00 g Galaxy [14.00 %] - Boil 5.0 min Hop 9 3.6 IBUs
20.00 g Cascade [5.50 %] - Steep/Whirlpool 0.0 Hop 10 0.0 IBUs
20.00 g Galaxy [14.00 %] - Steep/Whirlpool 0.0 Hop 11 0.0 IBUs
1.0 pkg Kveik Yeast 12 -
30.00 g Cascade [5.50 %] - Dry Hop 7.0 Days Hop 13 0.0 IBUs


Mash Schedule: BIAB, Medium Body
Total Grain Weight: 8.00 kg
----------------------------
Name Description Step Temperature Step Time
Saccharification Add 23.84 l of water at 73.6 C 66.7 C 75 min

And here is the christmas brown ale recipe:

Batch Size (fermenter): 95.00 l
Bottling Volume: 100.00 l
Estimated OG: 1.061 SG
Estimated Color: 41.9 EBC
Estimated IBU: 65.0 IBUs
Brewhouse Efficiency: 58.00 %
Est Mash Efficiency: 58.0 %
Boil Time: 60 Minutes

Ingredients:
------------
Amt Name Type # %/IBU
25.00 kg BB Pale Ale Malt (6.5 EBC) Grain 1 74.6 %
2.50 kg BB Munich Malt - 10L (15.0 EBC) Grain 2 7.5 %
2.00 kg BB Wheat Malt (5.0 EBC) Grain 3 6.0 %
1.50 kg BB Brown Malt (125.0 EBC) Grain 4 4.5 %
1.50 kg BB Crystal Malt (120.0 EBC) Grain 5 4.5 %
0.40 kg BB Caraaroma (350.0 EBC) Grain 6 1.2 %
0.30 kg BB Dark Crystal (600.0 EBC) Grain 7 0.9 %
0.20 kg BB Carafa I Choco (900.0 EBC) Grain 8 0.6 %
0.10 kg BB Smoked Malt (6.5 EBC) Grain 9 0.3 %
300.00 g BB Goldings, East Kent 2012 [5.00 %] - B Hop 10 39.0 IBUs
200.00 g Goldings, East Kent [5.00 %] - Boil 60.0 Hop 11 26.0 IBUs
3.00 Items Protafloc Tablet (Boil 15.0 mins) Fining 12 -
1.0 pkg Nottingham (Danstar #-) [3000.00 ml] Yeast 13 -


Mash Schedule: Temperature Mash, 1 Step, Full Body
Total Grain Weight: 33.50 kg
----------------------------
Name Description Step Temperature Step Time
Saccharification Add 87.37 l of water at 70.1 C 64.0 C 90 min
Mash Out Heat to 75.0 C over 10 min 75.0 C 10 min

Sparge: Fly sparge with 58.11 l water at 75.6 C

Do you get anything from the Pacific Jade bittering in terms of flavor? I have Galaxy and Cascade, so I will try that combo. I thought Galaxy alone was a little one dimensional (passion fruit dimension).

Mer-man said:

Do you get anything from the Pacific Jade bittering in terms of flavor? I have Galaxy and Cascade, so I will try that combo. I thought Galaxy alone was a little one dimensional (passion fruit dimension).

Click to expand...

I'm not one of those that will claim that a bittering addition doesn't add any flavor, but I think it doesn't make too much of a difference when you have a lot of late hops.
In this case it was a cheap high alpha acid hop my LHBS had.

I have yet to taste the final product, legged it yesterday, but it smelled amazing so far. They liken galaxy to citra, and I think especially adding cascade really helped to bring out the more citrusy notes from it. I ended up only dry hopping with cascade because I had whole leaf of that one, and because of the infection, ended up dry hopping in the keg. So I left out the Galaxy since they were pellets. I'll brew an ipa this weekend with the two though.

Well, I got really excited because I brought the infection to the school's lab. But then they didn't have any dye for gram testing. Nor did they have this one oil you need for the 1000x lens. So it's not super clear at that level. I think to tell just by looking at the cells that you probably need way more than 1000x to identify different characteristics. But at least you can see that they're rod-shaped.

Those are yeast; not likely a Saccharomyces species based on the elongated morphology, bud size & bud location. Other than that, its not really possible to nail down what they are.

Bryan

Warthaug said:

Those are yeast; not likely a Saccharomyces species based on the elongated morphology, bud size & bud location. Other than that, its not really possible to nail down what they are.

Bryan

Click to expand...

Seriously? What about the size and location tells you this?

The big give away is the formation of rosettes (clusters of cells attached at the poles) and chains, and the very large bud sizes (some upto 2/3rd the size of the mother cell). Sacch species separate completely upon cell division (so no rosettes or chains) and tend to form buds that are much smaller than the parental cell. You also have some cells that are budding axially, which Sacch doesn't do.

It may also be a mixed culture, again that's not really possible to tell from simple microscopy

Warthaug said:

The big give away is the formation of rosettes (clusters of cells attached at the poles) and chains, and the very large bud sizes (some upto 2/3rd the size of the mother cell). Sacch species separate completely upon cell division (so no rosettes or chains) and tend to form buds that are much smaller than the parental cell. You also have some cells that are budding axially, which Sacch doesn't do.

It may also be a mixed culture, again that's not really possible to tell from simple microscopy

Click to expand...

So bacteria don't behave in the way you just described?

Hey so I just pitched my starter of the Omega Yeats Hothead that is the ?Stranda? strain in that blog.

And man....the starter wort was as fruity as the Brett Blend I use. Not spicy or tart like most other farmhouse yeasts. I dot have a good enough palette to pick out the fruitts but holy crap was it fruity. Fruitier than any sacch yeast ive ever tasted. I cant wait for the beer to be ready. Currently fermenting at 95F cause I figured I had to make the beer according to its namesake

I just brewed up the famous centennial blonde yesterday, using this strain. I made the starter on Thursday, but for some strange reason the activity didn't really start up until Friday evening. Which put a kink into my plans a bit. There was still a bit of krausen, though it was starting to drop, on Sunday when I pitched. I figure in the end it's not a bad thing since I had the starter going at around 25, and I planned on fermenting at 25, so any off flavors from the starter would already be something that I would want.
My process is ghetto and I kind of do a batch sparge but I only boil those runnings for like 5 mins. I do this instead of topping up with water, hoping it will help my efficiency go up.
So then I just counted the ~2 liters of the starter as part of the wort top up.
Anyways, I pitched the yeast at around 5, and by 9 it was already bubbling like crazy!
So we will see how it turns out in a few weeks.

joshesmusica said:

So bacteria don't behave in the way you just described?

Click to expand...

Bacteria are much smaller than what you have there.

Edit: Here is a picture comparing normal brewing yeast (slightly out-of-focus) to an average-sized bacteria

Lars sent me some of this as well about a year ago. Once I streaked it out and isolated what are pure strains I gave some to a friend and am now just getting around to using it and testing myself. Very excited!

Biobrewer said:

Lars sent me some of this as well about a year ago. Once I streaked it out and isolated what are pure strains I gave some to a friend and am now just getting around to using it and testing myself. Very excited!

Click to expand...

Were there all kinds of wild strains mixed in with sacch strains? Any bacteria present?

Biobrewer said:

Lars sent me some of this as well about a year ago. Once I streaked it out and isolated what are pure strains I gave some to a friend and am now just getting around to using it and testing myself. Very excited!

Click to expand...

That's what I was wondering about (not me alone) earlier in the thread, how to get hold of a sample of this strain... Like, there is some yeast exchange sort of club but looks like it its membership is a pretty tricky thing to obtain.

GQT said:

That's what I was wondering about (not me alone) earlier in the thread, how to get hold of a sample of this strain... Like, there is some yeast exchange sort of club but looks like it its membership is a pretty tricky thing to obtain.

Click to expand...

Well, I can't speak for anybody else, but owning your own yeast company (The Yeast Bay in my case) definitely makes people more likely to want to send you yeast to try out and evaluate!

Biobrewer said:

Lars sent me some of this as well about a year ago. Once I streaked it out and isolated what are pure strains I gave some to a friend and am now just getting around to using it and testing myself. Very excited!

Click to expand...

Was it the Voss strand that you got? How many different strains were there? Any non-sacch strains? Any bacteria?

joshesmusica said:

Was it the Voss strand that you got? How many different strains were there? Any non-sacch strains? Any bacteria?

Click to expand...

No idea, though I'm pretty positive there was no bacteria. All I know is I streak out any culture I get from anyone regardless of whether it's claimed to be a pure culture. I want to know that what I'm evaluating is a pure source and will be consistent.

Biobrewer said:

No idea, though I'm pretty positive there was no bacteria. All I know is I streak out any culture I get from anyone regardless of whether it's claimed to be a pure culture. I want to know that what I'm evaluating is a pure source and will be consistent.

Click to expand...

I'm wondering because of the pictures I took above, that another guy said was some kind of wild yeast, and likely not a sacch strain. Are you propagating this yeast? I know there are several followers of this thread in the US who would love to get this yeast.

I forgot to take any pictures, but a friend and I just kegged/bottled the Centennial Blonde recipe on here, but used the kveik. I have my half kegged, and I usually try to let it have 12 or so hours at 40 psi, then I let it sit for a couple of days at serving pressure. So I'll know in a couple of days how that one turned out. And no pellicle on this one, so it seems that I effed up that last batch somehow.

The one that got the supposed wild yeast, just doesn't really seem to be getting any clearer. It is a wheat beer, but I just assumed that it was the wild yeast that was leaving it what seemed like extra cloudy. But with the centennial blonde, even with a 3 day cold crash at near freezing temps, it wasn't really that clear. I didn't use gelatin though, because I didn't want the gelatin in with the harvest yeast. I did dry hop in the bucket though, but luckily all of those were just kinda sitting on top of the yeast cake. So I just scraped that off with a sanitized spoon before harvesting.

Yesterday we brewed up a typical Norwegian christmas beer. It's a brown, slightly spicy type of ale. My step-father-in-law brewed it last year, and I really enjoyed it. Since Lars described the characteristics given from this yeast as orange and christmas spices, I had my mind set a long time ago that I would brew this beer with it. It's already cranking away; airlock sounds like a machine gun. Pitched at around 6 p.m. yesterday, and when I went to bed at around 1 a.m. there was already significant airlock activity. I decided to not go very high on this one. I have it sitting in my ferment chamber with the lid open. It seems to still be trapping in quite a bit of heat, as the ambient air is 21C, yet the thermometer probe to my temp control is reading 27.2! That's not even taped to the bucket, it's just sitting at the bottom of the chamber.

Hej joshes,

so what has been the result of your 2 beers that you brewed with the vossakveik?

i brewed mine with Pils, Rye and CaraAroma @ 1.060; 40 IBU from Tradition and fermented @ 25°C / 77°F.

I got a ridiculous attenuation of 66% and a cloyingly sweet beer. Gladly i could market it as Christmas Ale / Jule Öl.

Any tips for a higher attenuation?

cheers from Münster

juan_bernado said:

Hej joshes,

so what has been the result of your 2 beers that you brewed with the vossakveik?

i brewed mine with Pils, Rye and CaraAroma @ 1.060; 40 IBU from Tradition and fermented @ 25°C / 77°F.

I got a ridiculous attenuation of 66% and a cloyingly sweet beer. Gladly i could market it as Christmas Ale / Jule Öl.

Any tips for a higher attenuation?

cheers from Münster

Click to expand...

Not really sure. Mine had great attenuation, including all of the starters.

I did three with that yeast, and to be honest, I won't use it again. My next one to attempt with it was going to be a more yeast-character-forward style, as the first two I did were a hoppy wheat beer and the centennial blonde from here, and a brown christmas ale. I was hoping to get some background yeast flavors from it on those three. The flavors it produces are not bad at all. But it doesn't clear at all. Maybe months and months down the line. But I brewed the centennial blonde in mid-october. 2 weeks fermentor, 3 weeks bottle conditioning, since then in the fridge. I just drank the last 1-liter bottle from that batch on New Year's Eve, and after about a month and a half in the fridge, it still didn't clear whatsoever.

I don't mind a little yeasty cloudiness, but this was like drinking orange juice. This was like those horrible examples from the "do you clear your beer" thread. I have a hoppy witbier in the keg right now, and the little bit of yeasty cloudiness in that one is perfect. This one I just can't get over. It pretty much ruined the christmas brown ale for me. My FIL brewed the exact same recipe last year for christmas, and used nottingham, and that beer was great.

So while it was really fun experimenting with this one. I think I'm done with it. There's a chance that I'll give it one more go, with a very plain recipe, and use a bunch of clearing agents to see if that helps. That's one thing I didn't use because I didn't want to rack to a secondary, and I didn't want a bunch of gelatin in with the saved yeast. But I've never had a beer sit in the fridge for 1 1/2 months and not clear. This one didn't budge at all in that time.

Here's one last update. I found out my brew partner had one last bottle, and it's even in a clear ikea swing top. We'll probably drink it tomorrow night. Put a kolsch yeast harvested from a starter next to it in order to show the difference. Also put another jar of yeast sitting behind the two, half and half. It's been sitting in the fridge for nearly 3 months, still as cloudy as this. Talked with Lars, and he said that the voss kveik is typically a very good flocculator, so it's hard to understand unless the people before me didn't take good care of it. But this is one that has just been repitched and repitched for centuries, so that shouldn't have been what caused it.

The group of guys who have the Hornindal kveik (and are talked about on Lars' blog) were at Norway's second biggest homebrewers competition, although it was only a prize for the public's favorite. They had a raw ale brewed with the kveik. It was super hazy, but it could've been because of it being a raw ale, and they do super short fermentations, with no fining agents or anything. So it was very fresh.

Either way, still unsure if I'll use it again. I'll keep it around in the fridge, but I've got so many other brews I want to try right now, I can't really commit my time, energy, etc. to such thick, yeasty beer.