How to avoid yeasty taste

[jean]

Hi,

I would like to ask how to avoid yeast taste in wheat beer, the taste develops in bottle with time and i get it only in wheat beers, yeasterday i opened a bottle that was bottled three month ago wasreally noticible, the taste reminds me the yeast cake smell after primary fermentation and defenetly doesn't fit

 

[jean]

By the way...i get it only in wheat beers, the yeast i was using was fermentis dry yeast wb-06

 

[JohanMk1]

In my very limited experience the yeast itself is the issue here.

I gave away the whole 6 gallon batch that I made with this yeast.

 

[jean]

Why? What was the problem? Was it the same as mine?

 

[JohanMk1]

A friend described it as yeasty.

I struggle with tasting vocabulary, but it's so much more than just yeasty.

I'd say sharp/sour/clove with a base of yeast.

Folks at my homebrew club liked it, but to me it was not what a wheat beer should be. I have a new batch in the fermenter at the moment with a harvested yeast from a local microbreweries weis.

Having searched HBT It seems that WB06 is a love / hate yeast.
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f163/wb-06-a-149355/

 

[downtown3641]

Are you pouring the yeast from the bottle into the glass?

 

[dannypo]

What do you consider a good wheat beer? Most german wheat beers are quite yeasty. Most american wheats have very little yeast character.

I have never used that yeast myself but I seem to remember it is a german weizen yeast.

 

[jean]

Johan described it pretty good the unwanted taste...i never tasted this kind of flavour in commercial beers like weinstephan or franciskanen. The taste i am talking about is pretty simmilar to the smell of the yeast cake in a fermenter only more mild. Moreover it develops with time.

 

[dannypo]

If the flavor is increasing over time you are dealing with a bacterial or wild yeast contamination.

 

[jean]

Possible but because i am working i a lab and i also have experience with microbiology and i really extra take care, this posibility is very small, also the taste is not of spoilage i would rather say it comes from dead yeast at the bottom of a bottle.

 

[jean]

Also i don't have this problem with other beer styles...

 

[dannypo]

What temp do you ferment at? What temp are your beers stored at? How long does it take for this flavor to develop?

Also not all infections will create sourness. Some are just very phenolic.

 

[Ogri]

Interested in the comments or advice that may come regarding this as I've got a pack of wb-06 I was going to use in a wheat beer for a spring/summer brew.

I thought wb-06 was the Wiehenstephan (sp?) strain, ideal for wheat beers.

Aren't wheat beers a bit "tart" anyway?? made a sort of Belgian wit last autumn using s-33 and really enjoyed it. definitely had a certain tartness to it.

 

[jean]

Danny, the fermentation temperature was 16-17 C for 5 days and then 20 for the next 9 days. The beer was stored at room temperature tha is not more than 20C this time of year.

 

[chanson16]

Aren't wheat beers a bit "tart" anyway??

I would agree with this. I have made a couple wheat beers and they were both very "tart". I thought it was the yeast so I switched to a clean american yeast like 1056 in my most recent wheat batches without much difference. What I think is that having too much wheat in the grain bill is the problem. My last wheat was only 30% wheat and the rest 2-row. It was much better for my tastes.

 

[Ravenshead]

The clove/banana esters you're describing are appropriate for German style wheat beers and to be expected from that yeast. If you don't like that character, (and many don't) then go with an American wheat yeast like WLP 320 if you're going to continue with wheat beers.

 

[jean]

Actually i like the german wheat beer character of weinstephan and simmilar but may be I should first try to change the yeast and then to change the grain bill, new idea i thought about just now, maybe the low temperature fermenting tends to produce more delicate beers that doesn't fit with those yeast that are ment to produce high phenol and ester beers, what do you guys think about it?

 

[Ravenshead]

I don't know that lower temps will reduce the amount of esters for this strain like they do for english strains. However, lower temps will increase the clove character and higher temps will increase the banana. According to Fermentis, the turning point is at 22 C. If that doesn't work I'd switch to a different strain. Tweaking your grain bill won't do a whole lot in this case.

 

[jean]

Maybe it's the clove character i don't like...next time i will try 22C