WLP644 as primary yeast in sour

I'm thinking of brewing a golden sour using WLP644, Trios wild yeast. I love the flavor profile of pineapple and mango and think that it would work really well. However, since WLP644 converts lactic acid into the pineapple/mango compound I'm worried it won't sour with Lacto, but it will become unbearably fruity. Anyone brewed a sour with 644 before?

 

Its not brett, white labs officially came out and said its sacch

 

True, but it is still a wild yeast and it definitely produces the compound, I wish I could remember what it was called, that is pineapple and mango in nature. I'm pretty sure it comes from lactic acid. I put 10mL of lactic in a one gallon experiment and the pineapple, mango was very heavy and the lactic twang was not present.

I'm concerned that if I try to brew a sour with it as the primary it may just be a massive tropical fruit bomb. As responses have been slow I may have to take the leap in the name of science...and beer.

 

Sorry I don't have an answer for you, but my next brew will be with 644 and I am also curious. I am stepping it up now so there's no turning back! I've never used it so I don't really know what to expect, but I was hoping for some tartness like the description suggests. I haven't settled on a recipe yet, but the ripe fruit smells coming from my starter make me interested in trying some sort of dubbel recipe with some special B.

 

It's an awesome yeast. I've used it a couple of times in an IPA. It's got very strong tropical flavors and aroma like nothing else I've ever had. Alone, it finished at 4.5 pH, but wasn't tart, to me at least. It works nicely with wheat in my opinion.

 

Don't know. I too have used WLP644 as the primary (sole) yeast... in an IPA. It was good. Tropical-fruity and spicy. But that doesn't answer your question. I've also used WY5526 (Brett lambicus) as the primary yeast for a batch that was sour-worted with lacto. That one did not lose its sourness. But that also doesn't answer your question.

I looked briefly around the Internet. It seems a few people have used Trois in secondary for a sour batch and not reported any misadventures. See Oldsock's blog entry, for example.

Sounds like you should try it and report back!

 

Well, I think I'm going to go for it. For my first go around I'm going to brew a Berliner Weisse style beer. I'll kettle sour with the lacto I cultured from grain and then pitch WLP644. Should be interesting.

 

I can't say I remember reading anything about any sacc or brett strains converting lactic acid to anything else; brett would be the most likely candidate for that if one did. The conversion of lactic acid to something else would yield a higher pH (or less acidic) beer, wouldn't it? I'm intrigued with your post because it's the first I hear of the possibility. I'm also interested in how your next brew with 644 (golden sour) comes out. Keep us posted. Do you have the ability to log pH levels throughout the process?

 

Ethyl butyrate is the ester you are searching for I believe. Saccharomyces "bruxellensis" Trois (WLP644's new name) will definitely produce it, though I do not believe it requires Lactic Acid to do so. I ferment a "clean" IPA with this yeast and it abounds with pineapple aroma and flavor.

With all that being said, I have some planned brews doing kettle souring with Lacto, and then fermenting it out with this yeast. So am curious as to how yours turns out.

 

It would require butyric acid and ethanol. Lactic acid and ethanol would give ethyl lactate.

 

I'm planning on using the 644 in a rye IPA, something similar to SN "Ruthless Rye", but with a few twists....

 

It is ethyl lactate that I was trying to remember. In this posthttp://www.themadfermentationist.com/2012/07/100-brett-trois-ipa-recipe.html forth paragraph Michael talks about adding lactic acid to the beer to produce " the fruity ester ethyl lactate." Also on another page http://www.themadfermentationist.com/2009/04/brewing-sour-beer-with-acid.html Chad talks about it a little in the comments, though he never does give his conclusions. Personally I brewed up 9 gallons of my clean 644 IPA (getting brewed by a local brewery here in town soon, sorry for the shameless plug :fro and fermented 5+ gallons regular (I add 1mL lactic acid/mL wort), 1 gallon with 5 extra mL Lactic acid and the rest were different aeration levels. The 5mL extra Lactic gave a noticeably stronger pineapple aroma and flavor.

I do. I plan to track it at mash, as it is kettle souring (I'm shooting for the 3.3-3.5 range, but will be dropping it from mashout pH to 4.5 immediately to inhibit wild yeast growth), then I will take a few reading of pH as it ferments (when I pull samples for gravity) and a final time before packaging. Any other times that would be of importance that I am missing?

 

It sounds like you've got a solid plan and I look forward to any input you provide about how the process works out. I'm just wondering if a raising of pH can be expected over time due to the 644 converting the lactic acid to other compounds (unless, of course, the other compounds are also acidic in nature)? Very interesting ideas. Maybe it's time for me to play with some 644 too

 

I've done this once, although with a long fermentation including brett/pedio/lacto. Primary with Trois and a year in secondary with some dregs from 3 Fonteinen. Dry hopped it with Galaxy/Amarillo/Cascade (total 5g/L).

The result is like a mix of sparkling white wine and apple cider - backed up by a medium sourness and a beautiful, complex tropical funk. It is hands down the best beer I have made to this date (and it made first place in the (Swedish) Omnipollo home brew competition 2014/2015).

Now, more than a year after bottling when most of the hop aromas have left, it still has a lot of tropical fruit going on, from the yeast/bacteria I guess.

 

Nice, I can't wait to get to this brew.

 

I brewed a blonde ale with 644 in primary a few months ago. I cracked my first bottle last week and the aroma was rampant with pineapple and mango. I did dry hop for a week with el dorado, Rakau, and centennial, but the yeast played a big role (I tasted the beer prior to the dry hop, at which point the beer had only a few IBUs from an early addition of Hallertau). Best of luck, I'm sure you'll be pleased with the results.

 

Was it a sour blonde or regular? If it was sour, did you notice the 644 dulling the sourness over time?

 

There was no lacto or pedio added to fermentation, 644 was the only culture

 

should i use my regular equipment since its a sacch strain? i dont want to "infect" with my sour equipment.

 

Interested to see how this turns out. I have yet to use 644 but really need to get some.

 

That's an excellent question. At the time, it was still classified as a Brett strain so I went with my sour gear. I washed the yeast and will pitch it again soon so I'll likely keep it in my sour equipment

 

I've used my regular equipment for it each time I've used 644. I do clean it extra well afterward and then soak everything I can in starsan for 30 minutes afterward, but that's probably overkill.

 

I have a Berliner Weisse going right now - I hit it initially with Lacto culture'd up from grain + lacto delbrucki. In about 24hrs in the fermenter, dropped down to 3.3 (measured at around 110F), added WLP644 after 48hrs (still pH 3.3) checked again today (around 72 hrs) and it's quite fruity, and the pH measures 3.4, although the temp is now 75F, which will account for a bulk of that difference. I was only looking for stable pH originally, so I didn't bother with trying to adjust for temp.

it's only about 1/3 of the way through fermenting, so I'll keep an eye on the pH and see if it changes as it goes, but at least initially, I don't think there's been a significant change.

 

I use 644 as the primary fermentation strain when I do quick sours in this vein: http://www.bear-flavored.com/2015/02/nelson-sauvin-dry-hopped-no-boil-sour.html, using a lacto starter from grain. It gets plenty sour. Whether or not 644 is converting lactate to ethyl lactate, it isn't converting a large amount.

I don't think anything fully converts flavor compounds into more desirable ones. This comes up in discussions about butyric acid (vomit) - small amounts might be converted to isoamyl butyrate, but if you have a lot of any one compound, only a fraction is going over. (i.e., if something is really, really off, it's going to take a long time to be cleaned up) This seems to be true of lactate as well. Some is converted, but there's plenty left over to sour the beer.

 

*reply deleted*

 

I recently wrote White Labs about this strain and I got this response:

Hi Zachary,

I’ve address each question below:

Pitching rate: It's going into a kettle sour after some lacto souring and it will be the primary fermenter. Since this strain is already well suited for an acidic environment, do I really need to pitch more cells than I would an ale strain? For example, I usually do a lager pitch for a kettle sour if I'm using something like US-05.

Depends on your PH. If it’s below 3, you will need to up your pitch rate some to accommodate the additional acidity.

2. Making a starter: Do I treat this more like a sacch starter or a brett starter? It will have 100b cells in the new packaging so I'm sure multi steps won't be necessary but will the starter still need about a week or will a few days do the trick. Afterwards would decanting be the best? I'm reading it doesn't settle easily so I'm thinking it would need to be in the fridge for a while.

The starter will happen as quickly as any other sacch strain, so don’t plan a week! A single step over a day or two will be perfect.

3. I have all clean beer equipment. I clean and sanitize well but this still makes me nervous. It's not Brett but it's unlike any Sacch strain. Will my gear get infected? I'm reading it's pretty safe to work with but I'm still a little freaked out.

This is pure Sacch, so no need to worry about contamination. Just standard sanitation measures will keep you perfectly safe!