Dried Voss (kveik in general) is amazing

[Panderson1]

Pitched one pack (rehydrated) into 1.089 wort (x2IPA) 2 hours ago and it's already partying.
Long gone are the days of shipping liquid yeast. Worrying about health. Making a starter. Temperature control..... have fun with that

I probably could have pitched half this pack. $3 bucks.

Clean as a whistle. My last 10 batches have been flawless.

Dry yeast all day. Especially kveik.

I wish this stuff was available 10 years ago when i 1st started brewing. Would have saved lots of headaches

 

[DonT]

Yeah, I like dried Voss. Just kegged an 8.7% hazy that I had done in about 8 days. Pitched a whole pack @ 82F. It overshot a bit, got all the way down to 1.010 from 1.075.

 

[kadozen]

Sitting on an experimental recipe I plan to do in the next 3 batches. Guys at the LHBS have a door sour raspberry they did with Sourvisae. They said when they go back to it they're co-pitching with Voss, so figured I'd give it a shot. They had to dilute the batch because Sourvisae on its own can get enamel melting levels of sour.

Will be my first go with any kviek station strain

 

[niconizer]

On Saturday I tried dry Voss for the first time. I brewed centennial blonde.

Same here, after 2h fermentation was fully going on. It already slowed down that much, I am going to take a reading tomorrow.

Can’t wait to taste.

 

[Indian_villager]

I love that these kveik yeasts can rip through a beer without any fussing. However, have y'all found these beers to come out on the thin side. Especially if your OG is below 1.070?

 

[hottpeper13]

Lutra seems to finish around 1.010 no matter the mash temp or ferment temp.

 

[DonT]

I love that these kveik yeasts can rip through a beer without any fussing. However, have y'all found these beers to come out on the thin side. Especially if your OG is below 1.070?

I think the thin mouthfeel is due to the fact that it attenuates quite well. I let my 1.075OG go all the way down to 1.010 and it's a bit thinner than I wanted. My intention was to soft crash when it got to where I wanted ~1.015... I waited a day too long... that's all it took.

 

[OssianOtt]

I love voss kveik. My beer with any other yeas (albeit not that many, maybe 8-10 others) I've tried never tasted as good. The more you learn about it the more amazing it gets, like pitching 5 ml of slurry in a 20-25 liter batch and it just loves under pitching, or the fact that you can dry freeze it and keep it for 20 years, pitching a teaspoon dry frozen flakes (yet to try, i'm pitching slurry ATM).

 

[Panderson1]

^ i don't even worry about slurry cause a 1/4 pack isn't even $2 bucks.

I pitched half pack in a 12 gal batch last time.

 

[Jaurez]

I love Kveik Voss. Where I live has really hot summers, so it's become my summer yeast, but I'll use it all year round.

I guess it was bred with such extreme conditions that it can handle whatever we subject it to without much hassle - true viking yeast.

I mainly use it for IPAs and pale ales, but I want to try the other kveik to see whether they'll suit my maltier ales.

 

[Ninoid]

Tried with dry Voss Kveik yeast a few times and every time my beer was sour as if I squeezed a lot of lemon juice into it. True, the wort had less than 1,050 OG and I did not use nutrients.

 

[DonT]

Tried with dry Voss Kveik yeast a few times and every time my beer was sour as if I squeezed a lot of lemon juice into it. True, the wort had less than 1,050 OG and I did not use nutrients.

I think you mean tart.... which it can definitely be. What temp did you ferment at?

 

[Ninoid]

I think you mean tart.... which it can definitely be. What temp did you ferment at?

I agree, tart. I tried five or six times, from 18'C to over 35'C and every time the same.

 

[Protos]

Historically, Kveik yeasts, with all their praiseworthy qualities, have been selected to work at no less than 1.070 gravity. They just didn't brew lighter farmhouse ales there in Norway.
Fermenting thinner worts isn't its intended use, that's why so many complaints on using Kveik in lighter styles. Frankly, I found all my Kveik-fermented beers of the styles other than classic Norwegian Farmhouse Ales fairly yucky. Excessive tartness, peculiar and not-so-pleasant orangey twang, etc. But, when I go for an authentic strong Norwegian Farmhouse Ale from Garshol's book, juniper twigs including, I always get excellent results.

 

[hottpeper13]

Maybe that's why my 9% DIPA is so tasty.

 

[DonT]

Historically, Kveik yeasts, with all their praiseworthy qualities, have been selected to work at no less than 1.070 gravity. They just didn't brew lighter farmhouse ales there in Norway.
Fermenting thinner worts isn't its intended use, that's why so many complaints on using Kveik in lighter styles. Frankly, I found all my Kveik-fermented beers of the styles other than classic Norwegian Farmhouse Ales fairly yucky. Excessive tartness, peculiar and not-so-pleasant orangey twang, etc. But, when I go for an authentic strong Norwegian Farmhouse Ale from Garshol's book, juniper twigs including, I always get excellent results.

It might not be the intended use, but my NZ Pils made with Lutra @ 5.1ABV came out fine with none of the tartness or orangey stuff, that's Voss. And I have to agree, at least with Voss, I do think it works better at higher gravities. And I think the degree of tartness is temp dependent (this is my own working theory, would need more testing}, and maybe gravity has an influence as well.

 

[Protos]

The Hornindal strain (=Lutra) has no orangey twang, which is specifically Voss' thing. Hornindal is much more forgiving, in my experience, because its peculiar twang is of a "creamy" or "milky" character rather than fruity, it's also much less intrusive and noticeable even when pushed forward a bit. Probably, that's why Lutra seems to be much more popular in "foreign" styles than Voss.

On whether tartness and temperature are interrelated in some way, I can't judge. Although I've brewed Kveik-fermented beers of various gravities, I never tried fermenting them at various temperatures, all have been warm-fermented. The lower the gravity, the higher the tartness, that was my takeaway. I used mostly Voss, I rarely put my hands on Hornindal.

 

[Ninoid]

I can confirm that the temperature is not crucial because I fermented several batches at temperatures from 18'C to 35'C and the taste was always the same, and tartness was the predominant taste. I think you're right about the OG as my beers are never over 1.050, which is obviously quite low for Kveik.

 

[Cheshire Cat]

I use Voss and Horn for my American Amber and it’s always turned out great. Watch David Heath’s channel on YouTube he’s a great advocate of Kveik.

 

[Ninoid]

I use Voss and Horn for my American Amber and it’s always turned out great. Watch David Heath’s channel on YouTube he’s a great advocate of Kveik.

What is the OG of your Kveik Amber and what is the fermentation temperature?

 

[Cheshire Cat]

OG 1051, fermentation at 30C in 5 days down to 1010.

 

[Ninoid]

OG 1051, fermentation at 30C in 5 days down to 1010.

Dry Voss Kveik yeast?

 

[Cheshire Cat]

I’ve used both Voss and Horn.

 

[Ninoid]

I'm thinking, is it a good idea to ferment a high OG with Voss Kveik and then dilute it with water when bottling to get an ABV around 5%? Maybe that way I would avoid the tartness.

 

[Protos]

Technically, that's possible. It's called High Gravity Brewing. It's widely employed in the big industry to produce those watery and tasteless mass beers. At the homebrew level you may dilute a 1.080-1.100 beer up to 25% before the dilution starts to ruin the flavour balance.

But, do you really must to produce weird kveiky-like pseudo-kveikies by the dilution of the real Farmhouse-style beers? Be ready that any dilution makes your beer a bit watery even if it's below 25%, and Voss Kveik is already too much of a peculiar yeast to fiddle with its flavour any further. In my view, there's just no point to go such lengths to get an Ersatz-kveik, when you have thousands of beer recipes to brew properly in the 1.050 range using dozens of properly chosen yeasts.

Or just switch to Hornindal (Lutra etc.) which is not as tang. With Voss, you won't get luck under 1.070, I promise. I didn't.
Each yeast has its range of applications, and that of the Kveik yeast (Voss Kveik strain in particular) is suprisingly narrower than with most other yeasts. Which really shouldn't be much surpising as the strain has been selected for hundreds of years for producing, actually, the single sort of beer.

If the "light Kveik" tastes sour/tangy, just throw in some Soda. It gonna taste even more schitty but it won't be tart anymore. I did that.

 

[Ninoid]

Technically, that's possible. It's called High Gravity Brewing. It's widely employed in the big industry to produce those watery and tasteless mass beers. At the homebrew level you may dilute a 1.080-1.100 beer up to 25% before the dilution starts to ruin the flavour balance.

But, do you really must to produce weird kveiky-like pseudo-kveikies by the dilution of the real Farmhouse-style beers? Be ready that any dilution makes your beer a bit watery even if it's below 25%, and Voss Kveik is already too much of a peculiar yeast to fiddle with its flavour any further. In my view, there's just no point to go such lengths to get an Ersatz-kveik, when you have thousands of beer recipes to brew properly in the 1.050 range using dozens of properly chosen yeasts.

Or just switch to Hornindal (Lutra etc.) which is not as tang. With Voss, you won't get luck under 1.070, I promise. I didn't.

If the "light Kveik" tastes sour/tangy, just throw in some Soda. It gonna taste even more schitty but it won't be tart anymore. I did that.

I imagine that such a beer would taste like those beers that are made from factory cans and 1 kg of table sugar like I made at the beginning.
I quickly abandoned it.

 

[Protos]

Exactly. I's a personal taste thing, which probably involves body chemistry: you whether like Kveik-based fancy beers or hate them.
However I tried to come to love all those ultramodern kveiky recipes where every style is brewed with the trendy Norwegian strain, I couldn't get over it.
The majority of people probably won't agree that those beery Kveikensteins are excessively tart or otherwise unplesant. But if you (and I) do feel like that, why do we have to force ourselves to like, to brew, and to drink them? They aren't even as trendy as they used to be, so little gain from posting glasses of Kveik-fermented IPAs and Pastry Stouts on Instagram (lol ). I dropped those attempts for good and brew now only the real Nordic Farmhouse Ale recipes, which I like (although not as much as I like, f. ex. Bocks, English Strong Ales and Dubbels of equal strengths).

 

[Yesfan]

I read about the sour/tartyness of kviek in lighter beers, but what if you're pitching in bigger volumes vs larger gravities? Are you still going to get that sour twang when you pitch one pack of Lutra into a 10 gallon batch vs pitching 2 packs of US-05?

Another thing. One of the Apartment Brewer's episodes covered a comparison using Lutra in a pseudo-lager vs the real thing. IIRC, he adjusted his mash pH a little higher than norm to account for the tart factor. Any of you all tried that?

 

[sibelman]

Following up on @Yesfan I have to say that I'm intrigued by Kveik but I'm not looking for tart/sour in most of the beers I brew. Some of the above posts seem to claim that won't happen with higher-gravity beers. Also, that Kveik will attenuate strongly even with higher-gravity beers. Hmmm. High original gravity, I guess.

So: if I want to avoid even more subtle tartness, should I just stay away from all Kveiks? Are there particular Kveiks that don't do this? @Protos seems to say hornindal is "creamy or milky" -- maybe other words would help me understand that better?

Thanks in advance for any Kveik wisdom.

And, to @Yesfan -- I too was a Yes fan back in the day:
"Introduce me to that big blonde -- she's got a touch of Tuesday Weld."

 

[Yesfan]

Following up on @Yesfan I have to say that I'm intrigued by Kveik but I'm not looking for tart/sour in most of the beers I brew. Some of the above posts seem to claim that won't happen with higher-gravity beers. Also, that Kveik will attenuate strongly even with higher-gravity beers. Hmmm. High original gravity, I guess.

So: if I want to avoid even more subtle tartness, should I just stay away from all Kveiks? Are there particular Kveiks that don't do this? @Protos seems to say hornindal is "creamy or milky" -- maybe other words would help me understand that better?

Thanks in advance for any Kveik wisdom.

And, to @Yesfan -- I too was a Yes fan back in the day:
"Introduce me to that big blonde -- she's got a touch of Tuesday Weld."

You get two thumbs up from me friend. One for the obvious, my username. The other for the Donald Fagen lyric.

Cheers!