Yeast harvesting

I have been doing a lot of yeast harvesting (and washing). The last two yeast harvests I did (New Belgium's Belgo and Abbey Ale) came from beers with an amazing Belgian yeast flavor, however, when I use them in a brew, while they krausen nicely and ferment well, I don't get any of the yeast flavor present in the original beer. In fact, the beers I've fermented with these two harvests taste is as if I used S-05 or something fairly 'clean'.

Any ideas why the super flavorful yeast would be so 'clean' after harvesting?

fermentation temperature?

temp and pitching rates I find affect hefe and belgian yeast the most

You may not actually be harvesting the brewing strain? Some breweries filter or centrifuge their beer, and then add a high ABV tolerant neutral strain for the bottle conditioning...I'm not for sure about New Belgium...

I thought all NB beers were pasteurized except for the canned fat tire. It's possible those two beers are not pasteurized.

If you're happy with what you got then that's all that really matters.

ReverseApacheMaster said:

I thought all NB beers were pasteurized except for the canned fat tire. It's possible those two beers are not pasteurized.

If you're happy with what you got then that's all that really matters.

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Their Abbey Ale and Belgo both say "bottle conditioned" on the bottle. Although, the first time I attempted a harvest on their Abbey Ale it had no yeast in it. I emailed the company and asked and they said the last few batches from that time period were force carbed!

hopsalot said:

temp and pitching rates I find affect hefe and belgian yeast the most

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Yeah, I made a small starter and stepped it up over a couple of weeks. I don't know exactly what I had, but it looked as good as a starter from a liquid yeast I'd had success with (3787), but perhaps the strain required a different temp... I know the Belgian Abbey yeast from Wyeast requires >68 so perhaps the ~64 I have was not warm enough.

biochemedic said:

You may not actually be harvesting the brewing strain? Some breweries filter or centrifuge their beer, and then add a high ABV tolerant neutral strain for the bottle conditioning...I'm not for sure about New Belgium...

Click to expand...

That would explain it as well.

I was going to say, many breweries use a neutral bottle-conditioning yeast, perhaps NB does too. Otherwise, if not, I'd ferment it closer to 68-70.

Chimay, Achouffe and Saison Dupont are all harvestable Belgians, guaranteed to be bottled with the fermentation strain. Since 1 bottle costs about the same as 1 pack of liquid yeast, I like to think of them as yeast packs that include a free beer.