WLP320 more banana esters than anticipated

In my last wheat I opted for WLP320 because according to the white labs website:

Unlike WLP300, this yeast produces a very slight amount of the banana and clove notes. It produces some sulfur, but is otherwise a clean fermenting yeast, which does not flocculate well, producing a cloudy beer.

Click to expand...

I kept the ferment temps under 70, although it did skirt 68-69 for a day or so. But after 3 weeks in the fermenter and going on 3 weeks int he bottle it smells and tastes like a banana farm with real strong cloves as an aftertaste.

I know I should have kept it a few degrees cooler, but I really thought that because I went with 320 vs. 300 it would have been far less pungent even in the higher 60s.

It's drinkable, but so far it's not quite what I had expected and hope it mellows after a few more weeks. Is that just normal for this yeast even at the temps I was at? That's why I even let it sit in the fermenter for longer than originally planned, so it would hopefully clean up nice.

EDIT: and when I read through all of the reviews on the WL site people just kept raving about how they fermented at like 70-72 and ended up with no, or very little bananas and cloves. Seems a bit odd. I almost wonder if I got a vial of 300 that was mislabeled as 320.

Oh, and I popped the yeast forum's cherry

I wonder if the yeast was stressed a bit. That can also cause esters. How big of a starter did you make, and what was the OG of the batch?

Made a 1L starter about 24 hours in advance. Pitched the whole thing. OG was 1.055 and FG was 1.013. One thing about this yeast was that I did order it when we had a really hot few days and the ice pack in shipping along with the yeast were hot when they were delivered. Could the heat during transit have been enough to stress them like that?

marubozo said:

Made a 1L starter about 24 hours in advance. Pitched the whole thing. OG was 1.055 and FG was 1.013. One thing about this yeast was that I did order it when we had a really hot few days and the ice pack in shipping along with the yeast were hot when they were delivered. Could the heat during transit have been enough to stress them like that?

Click to expand...

I don't think the heat during shipping would lead to off-flavors, but I've been wrong before.

Are you used to hefeweizens? They can suprise people that are used to American wheats.

Yeah, I drink a number of wheat beers, especially american variants. I expected a little clove spice with maybe a hint of banana with this strain, but right now it's far beyond what even most german hefe's would have on the banana end.

And that's the other strange thing, is I thought you got banana from higher temps and clove from lower temps, yet this beer has strong characteristics of both.

Give it a bit longer and it will mellow some. I used the 320 recently for a Watermelon Ale. After about 2-3 weeks in the bottle, I opened it up and it tasted like an amazing banana beer...but not watermelon. I did ferment warm 76-77. Around week 4.5-5.5 in the bottle, the banana had mellowed tremendously. It's currently week 6.5, I will be out of town until week 9 in the bottle and I cannot wait to see what is going on.

+1 on giving it some time. i recently did a bavarian hefe with wyeast 3068. let it ferment out for 10 days, kegged it, and force carbed as i'd heard hefes were best young... a little too young i guess. the bananas weren't TOO bad, but definitely up front. i went on vacation for 2 weeks, came back and it was right on the money.

Good deal, thanks guys. Hopefully time heals all. I was just a little shocked after nearly six weeks total that it was so fruity given all I've heard about people getting wheats ready to drink in about a month.

So how did time treat your beer?

The banana did mellow slightly, but not as much as I had hoped. After a few more weeks the clove became very strong. In fact, I have just a few bottles left from this batch and it is almost too overpowering to drink.

I think it's just past its prime because about 3 weeks ago it was great. I'll probably try this beer again with the same yeast and experiment with some different fermentation temps and see what happens.