An Accidental Belgian with Nottingham Yeast?

[Thunder_Chicken]

At the start of the summer I attempted to brew a batch of Centennial Blonde while my cellar was still cool. I racked the beer off the Nottingham yeast cake from a previous batch of Centennial Blonde, added 1-gallon of bottled water, stirred, let it settle for ~ 30 minutes, then filled the 1-gallon jug with the still suspended yeast, and pitched that entire gallon as 1-gallon of make-up into 4 gallons of wort.

The original batch was clean and crisp, and fermented at about 66F ambient in the cellar on the original rehydrated Nottingham yeast from the packet. The temperature was still about 66F when I pitched the second batch, but this batch came out with a distinct Belgian yeast flavor and aroma. It really is strangely good, though I am not a huge Belgian fan. It really is pleasant.

The second ferment was quick and vigorous, so I am pretty sure the fermentation temps got significantly higher than the 66F ambient which is part of the issue. However, from my previous experience, Nottingham tends to get really cidery and fuselly when fermented too warm.

Something else is going on and I am trying to put my finger on it. Does anyone have any thoughts how I could have turned a British Ale yeast Belgian? I'm not necessarily looking to repeat the process, but I am curious as to how this might have occured. I guess a related question is, what combination of esters and phenolics makes a Belgian taste like a Belgian?

 

[two_one_seven]

Infection with a bug that produced the belgian characteristics. Could have been brett or a wild yeast. It it has a tart tang to it then I would suspect brett. Wash the batch and see what happens with the next beer it would be a fun experiment. You could have just gotten your own house strain.....

 

[ChefRex]

No expert but may i suggest that you over pitched?

 

[Thunder_Chicken]

I'm not sure how a wild yeast would have stood a chance in that ferment as it was probably violently overpitched with the yeast, and that first batch wasn't infected (if it were my previous batch would have been trashed). It isn't tart or tangy like a Brett - it's banana estery with a pinch of clove, very smooth and fruity. It's an effing good Belgian - not my thing usually but it is growing on me. I probably couldn't make this again if I tried.

I've had Nottingham fermented hot, and it generally gives off a smell of apple cider, acetaldehyde, and the taste is not anything that I would keep.

 

[Thunder_Chicken]

No expert but may i suggest that you over pitched?

Obviously. But everything I have read says overpitching generally suppresses ester formation as there is a limited growth phase. The conventional wisdom actually says to underpitch in Belgian and German styles. So with a gallon starter I should have made a crystal clean and dry beer, not a Belgian. And if the ferment got too hot (as I suspect it did), I should have gotten cidery esters typical to Nottingham, not a Belgian.

So what happened?

 

[stevedasleeve]

I would suspect an infection, albeit a positive one perhaps. I've racked onto a Nottingham yeast cake countless times with no unexpected results. I don't do this but for big beers however, 1,080 or more.

Steve da sleeve

 

[Thunder_Chicken]

There's no way an English ale yeast could be forced to make this flavor profile?

 

[two_one_seven]

Not likely. I say rises the yeast from that batch and ferment another batch at a slightly lower temp and see what you get. They will tell you more than spit balling and on the upside you might get another interesting beer.

 

[Thunder_Chicken]

One thing I did note was that the cake for the second batch did have a strange smell. Not really yeasty, kinda unpleasant. I noted the Belgian-y flavor then. I left this batch in the fermenter for 4 weeks in total, the longest time I ever let any beer sit in a fermentor, so I chalked up the funky smell to a long time in primary.

 

[devinebrewingvt]

i had a similar situation with notty yeast on a centennial blonde i bottled a few weeks back.. fermentation got away from me and was in the mid to upper 70's...racking was a mess and i got a bunch of yeast in the bottles.. i tried a couple bottles last night and the beer tastes real close to a saison/belgians...its really yeast dominant in aroma and flavor and tastes nothing like the centennial blondes i have brewed in the past.

 

[Thunder_Chicken]

At the risk of necroposting, I noticed that last winter (Fall 2012/Winter 2013) Lallemand Danstar came out with a dry Belgian yeast:

http://www.danstaryeast.com/products/belle-saison-beer-yeast

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f163/new-danstar-belle-saison-dry-yeast-359806/

I wonder if there wasn't some cross-contamination at the plant during that time, or crossed up packaging? What I brewed did not taste like a bad Nottingham ferment, it went Belgian, big time. Not sure why or how that could have affected the second batch on the cake and not the first out of the package. Still a mystery.

Anyway, I've since brewed several batches of English pale ale with Nottingham and they were fine.

 

[Jayslay]

You mentioned clove and banana aromas and flavours ? To me that sounds like a German Weizen strain..

 

[Fade1800]

At the risk of necroposting, I noticed that last winter (Fall 2012/Winter 2013) Lallemand Danstar came out with a dry Belgian yeast:

http://www.danstaryeast.com/products/belle-saison-beer-yeast

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f163/new-danstar-belle-saison-dry-yeast-359806/

I wonder if there wasn't some cross-contamination at the plant during that time, or crossed up packaging? What I brewed did not taste like a bad Nottingham ferment, it went Belgian, big time. Not sure why or how that could have affected the second batch on the cake and not the first out of the package. Still a mystery.

Anyway, I've since brewed several batches of English pale ale with Nottingham and they were fine.

It's funny that I found this thread. Earlier this month I tried a beer by Wooden Skiff Brewing Company that was dubbed an Irish Red, and it had distinctly Belgian notes to it. So much so that I made a big enough deal about it that several other people thought I was bonkers. After all, how can an Irish Red taste like it was brewed in a Monastery? It was a very good beer, don't get me wrong, but it wasn't any typical Irish Red that I'd ever had. I even had someone who purported to be quite knowledgeable in beer try to convince me that it was definitely a Scottish Ale yeast.

This bothered me to the extent that I contacted the brewery and was told that it was Nottingham that they use. This perplexed me even more. Until I saw this ... your theory makes a lot of sense. And you're not alone in experiencing this phenomena.

 

[tiltie]

Agree that this issue is an interesting observation and your solution reasonable. It might also be that seemingly unrelated posts involve the same solution. These posts describe biphasic fermentations (fermentations that involve a second substantial fermentation that takes place after the primary and separated by a few days or a week “lag&#8221. Biphasic fermentations are most easily explained by the presence of two yeast strains: one a minor “contaminating” population that is more attenuative than the bulk of the major, less attenuative, population. In my, and others, experience Windsor yeast (Lallemand) consistently produces biphasic fermentations. I went so far as to contact the company with my suspicions that the Windsor strain was a mixed population (contaminated with Notty?). Company replied with assurances that this was not the case. Clearly, there are more ways to explain biphasic growth but the easiest one is the one you suggest in your thread, contamination at the company.