Chimay yeast?

It's my first attempt harvesting yeast... I confiscated an almost empty bottle of Chimay - the blue bottle - in the middle of a diner. And while my wife was apologizing to our friends, I took the bottle away to the basement.

Later I fed the slurry with some light wort and transfered it to a flask. The thing started to grow and now I have a lot more of it. I don't know what it is. It smells beer, not strongly, no apparent bad flavor...

Now, the problem is that I don't know what to do with it. Would you have any idea of a recipe I for this yeast?

It should work well with any of the Belgian Strong Ale recipes. You may have to replicate the yeast a couple of times to get enough to make a 5 gallon batch.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f71/easy-chimay-blue-clone-73965/

Just a thought...

I'd brew a Belgian style dubbel or tripel.

beware! Many breweries use a different yeast at bottling. So you may not be getting the yeast from fermentation.

FYI: white labs sells the Chimay yeast it's WLP500

Thanks I'll follow your advice and replicate the yeast a couple times more. You are right It may be a different yeast, but I don't think I'll make a Chimay anyway - too ambitious at my level - I'll try to find a simple dubble or triple recipe as suggested. Eventually if the yeast is happy I should be happy too, right?

My recollection from Brew Like a Monk (great book) is that Chimay uses the same yeast at bottling as they use for fermenting. (I think this was true of all the Trappist ales).

Don't worry about a chimay being "too ambitious"--just pick a recipe that looks good to you and give it a try. You'll make good beer!

dingusmingus said:

Don't worry about a chimay being "too ambitious"--just pick a recipe that looks good to you and give it a try. You'll make good beer!

Click to expand...

+1 I don't think a Chimay recipe would be any harder to brew then any other Belgian ale.

Pitch the right amount of healthy yeast, keep control of the fermentation temps and you should have a very nice beer.

I believe dingusmingus is correct -- it's the same strain Chimay uses for fermentation.

You could brew any sort of Belgian beer with that strain, as long as you want the ester components from the yeast.

The Chimay Grand Reserve, Blue, isn't that complicated to brew. The biggest thing is to make sure that you don't have a massive boil over. There are lots of fermentable sugars in that one including 2lbs. of Belgian dark candy syrup. At least there was in the recipe that I brewed. Best to do a full boil in a really big pot if at all possible.