Belgian Aberdeen/ Danstar Nottingham blend

[acolman]

Hello everyone!

A couple wee ago I made an APA

2.2kg lme
500g crystal 20
400g carafoam
85g German munic (a handful for good measure)

Bringing it to 1.047 og ending with 1.012 fg

All cascade hops bringing it to 36 Ibu the additions were weighted more to the 20 min mark to get the flavour

I had bought a wyeast Belgian smack pack, I haven't started using starters yet, and because it was such low gravity I figured if I smacked it and let it go for 6 hours it should be good.

Well 7 hours later it was still flat as my wort. I decided to pitch the wyeast and add a a third of a package of Danstar nottingham to make sure the cell count was high enough and the Belgian didn't get stressed out. It fermented out and tastes pretty good.

Question- does this make sense? What was most likely to have happened in that micro battle field?

 

[markg388]

you tell us, does it taste more american or belgian? even mix? I've been wanting to play with yeast blends for a hot minute now and haven't gotten around to it.

 

[acolman]

It's been a week in the bottle and I tried it yesterday. The Belgian defiantly won that battle. I am not getting any off flavours from Belgian. I was worried it might stressout and be to fruity. I picked that yeast because I wanted the cleanest Belgian flavor I could get. I fermented it at 65 and it did well. As far as the Danstar I dint know if I did anything to be honest because I got the Belgian taste I was looking for.

It very much has the APA flavor I was looking for aswell.

However I am not getting a lot of the cascade flavor as I think it's been overpowered by the yeast.

Overall. I like it.

Hope that made sense.

 

[markg388]

interesting, i wonder what it would've tasted like if it was just pure belgian. Glad it's tasty, thanks for posting!

 

[devilishprune]

You pitched three packages of dry yeast and a smack pack for a 1.047 beer?That's some serious overkill. You could have gotten away with NOT making a starter on the smack pack (although I think that it's always good to make one).

The pack doesn't have to inflate before pitching, sometimes they just don't. Next time you're just going to have to wait longer if you don't make a starter. You can't expect it to take off as soon as it would otherwise. Besides, it can take 72 hours for fermentation to begin.

 

[Clann]

You pitched three packages of dry yeast and a smack pack for a 1.047 beer?That's some serious overkill. You could have gotten away with NOT making a starter on the smack pack (although I think that it's always good to make one).

The pack doesn't have to inflate before pitching, sometimes they just don't. Next time you're just going to have to wait longer if you don't make a starter. You can't expect it to take off as soon as it would otherwise. Besides, it can take 72 hours for fermentation to begin.

it was 1/3 of a pack.