Forbidden Fruit (3463) vs. Belgian wit (3944) Experiment

[TheH2]

I just brewed a 10 gallon batch of wit on Saturday and pitched forbidden fruit in 5 gallons and Belgian wit in the other. I figured I'd post the results of the experiment here and update when I have the finished product.

Caveats: I have one Cool Brewing cooler that I used to keep the forbidden fruit at 68 degrees. I fermented the Belgian Wit in the basement but put it in my keezer a few times as the temperature rose. The temperature never got higher than 70 or below 66.

I whirlpooled after cooling and some trub came out in the beginning of the poor which I pitched Belgian Wit. I'm not sure if that would have an impact on the result but I thought it was worth noting.

Smell:
The forbidden fruit gave off a strong alcohol smell, burned the nose a little bit and was surprisingly not that fruity.

The Wit yeast smells like orange peel. Very fruity. My entire basement smells like fruit. It's kind of crazy.

Fermentation:
Forbidden Fruit was very strong but has now slowed with krausen falling overnight Sunday into Monday. It's now out of the cooler.

Belgian Wit was also very active and definitely a top crop yeast with a lot of krausen. It is still very active now (Monday morning) and still has high krausen.

I'll probably let it sit for two weeks and then keg. I'm definitely thrown off by the smell coming off both beers. I was wondering if I switched them but the high krausen I'm getting from the Belgian Wit yeast is what I would expect based on the information from Wyeast.

I'll certainly keep this updated but wanted to get my thoughts down while they were fresh.

 

[TheH2]

Update 1:
I kegged this batch on Sunday. The FG for both was 1.01 with starting gravity of 1.052. The forbidden fruit fermented a little faster, with a caveat. I did a 1.5L yeast starter for Forbidden Fruit but I accidentally purchased the wrong yeast (3942 I believe) instead of 3944 so I couldn't make a starter. The day before brewing I purchased two packs of Belgian Wit. The cell count would probably be higher for 3944 than it was for 3463 according to calculators. Both were fermenting strong 12 hours later so not much lag time.

There appeared to be a lot more yeast from the 3944. Although that could be the result of picking up a little more trub after the boil (noted in post 1 above).

Aroma:
3463 was actually fairly bland. It didn't have much of a wow factor.
3944 The orange peel really came out in the aroma.

A little more on fermentation:
I kept the fermentation temperatures low on forbidden fruit because of past experiences. The temperature got up to 72 and it tasted more like a sweet tart at first. It certainly mellowed with age but I wanted to avoid that. I tend to like my wit beers to be more like Port City Optimal Wit than Avery White Rascal (not that I don't like White Rascal).

 

[GuldTuborg]

Good stuff. Keep us posted as you continue to taste them, please.

 

[giant]

This is great. I'm doing something similar in my attempts to clone 5 Rabbit 5 Lizard. Just a few weeks from tasting 3463.

 

[MNDan]

I've got a Forbidden Fruit vs WL410 split batch of ginger wit beer going right now, so I'll be interested to hear how your results compare to mine.

410 is my fav wit yeast as of right now, but after seeing how well the 3463 takes off it would be nice if it produced a similar tasty result.