I have Ommegang's Yeast, now what?

[El_Exorcisto]

I have a 16oz starter cooking in an Ommegang Abbey Ale bottle. I used some of the yeast slurry to culture a plate, and the rest had a pint of hopped started wort poured in to get enough to pitch with. It fired up on day 3, and is just finishing out.

I want to brew something big and yummy with it, but first I want something little to ramp up my yeast supply. Should I do an Enkel/Patersbier? Maybe a Wit? I need some suggestions...

 

[strat_thru_marshall]

**edit** mis-read the post. haha. 8.5% abv getting to me...

The Wit might be cool, something with big citrus zest and low gravity? What are you planning on re-pitching into after the first batch?

 

[El_Exorcisto]

I'm thinking a dubbel or belgian stout on the second pitch.

 

[indigi]

Their wit is delicious. I'd start with that then have a go at their saison, Hennepin.

Do you regularly hop your starters? I've read that if you're making a starter from dregs or old yeast, it's best not to include any hops as the same things that protect against infection affects yeast cells too, so you'll get a lot of resin-coated yeast that is unhealthy or mutates or can't attenuate properly. I've never done it myself to compare, so I don't know if it has a noticeable effect if everything else goes smoothly.

 

[DrawTap88]

Their wit is delicious. I'd start with that then have a go at their saison, Hennepin.

Do you regularly hop your starters? I've read that if you're making a starter from dregs or old yeast, it's best not to include any hops as the same things that protect against infection affects yeast cells too, so you'll get a lot of resin-coated yeast that is unhealthy or mutates or can't attenuate properly. I've never done it myself to compare, so I don't know if it has a noticeable effect if everything else goes smoothly.

+1 to both of his suggestions.

I've heard the same thing for starters. I believe, as I also don't have experience in this area...yet, is that you want to use hopped starter wort for plates and slants, since that will help isolate the yeast colonies without letting any bacteria grow.

 

[Jaysus]

I was under the impression that Ommegang used a different yeast for bottle conditioning than they did for fermentation... I have no recollection of where I may have heard that though, so take it with a grain of salt.

 

[bknifefight]

The Abbey may not be the best to get your yeast from. If I remember correctly, it chimes in over 7%, doesn't it? If it is the same yeast used to ferment, it will be stressed and will not give you the best results. Their Witte and BPA are lower ABV and use the same yeast.

 

[El_Exorcisto]

I am using the yeast that I have, from a bottle of my uncle's from Christmas Eve. I hop my starter wort because I am doing a lot of work with wild yeast strains and want to keep the unwanted nasties out... And because Papazian told me to and I don't know any better. It's attenuated to 73% right now, and will probably round out around 75%. Ommegang uses the same yeast for everything, that comes from the brewmaster. If they lied about that, they use some other strong belgian strain to bottle, because my starter tastes delightful.

 

[permo]

I would just to a light belgian ale to build yeast, not even really a style but I did this with chimay and it was great.

10 pounds pilsen
1 pound sugar
ramp temps up to dry it out
15 IBU of whatever at 60

it was tasty

 

[El_Exorcisto]

So I brewed up something fun with it tonight. It's 6 lbs pale, 2 lbs toasted pale, 1/2 lb honey, an ounce of cascades split between 60 and 15 minute additions, and the zest of two limes at flameout. It's cooling in the basement now, I'll pitch the yeast before I leave for work in the morning.

permo, the style you talk about and the one I did are called Enkels or Patersbiers depending on the monastery. They are the beers the monks drink day to day, something you can live on without getting tanked too fast.

 

[DBear]

I built up the Ommegang WITTE yeast in three steps into a 1200ml starter for a 1.060 belgian blonde and had great results.

 

[El_Exorcisto]

Interesting fermentation... I had a big fluffy white krausen dotted by brown spots after about 12 hours. That lasted two days, and last night when I looked it had dropped a bit and was a tan color. This afternoon when I checked it out, it is quite enormous again, but the same tan color. Temperatures have been held a steady 74 since the beginning.

 

[El_Exorcisto]

Ok, so fermentation is over, it's bottled, and I tried my first taster tonight. I like seeing what it tastes like as soon as it gets carbed, I know, 3 weeks minimum...

I added a half pound of home made dark candi rock as the fermentation slowed, which was gobbled up in an imperceptible amount of time, netting me around 80% attenuation. The lime zest really comes through in a wonderful way, much to my surprise. It is also an incredible foil to the dark candi, which I thought would be a clash and a half. What a wonderful beer... Now I just need to keep my paws off it for another month or so to give it time to marry and mellow.

Something about the brew makes my tongue sort of numb, too... Quite odd.

 

[indigi]

I put the dregs of a 750ml Witte bottle into a 150ml starter for about 56 hours, then dumped that into a ~900-1000ml starter on my stirplate. Maybe too big of a jump for such a small amount of yeast, but what's done is done. After 12 hours on the stirplate there wasn't much visible activity or much of a change in the appearance of the starter. I may have a dud here, or maybe I'm just being impatient. I'll give it at least 3 days before making any decisions. Maybe I'll add another 800ml of wort after a few more days and see what happens.

 

[El_Exorcisto]

I doubt it was too big a jump... I just dumped 12oz of starter wort on top of the dregs and shook it daily... It fired off pretty fast, and I am not tasting anything "off" this early in the beer. You might have a dud, like you said. Ommegang carbonates higher than most beers, which I would imagine leads to a fast die-off of the yeast.

The bottle of Abbey-Ale I harvested from was only two weeks out of the brewery, and I am sure that helped me out a lot.