LALBREW® VOSS KVEIK ALE YEAST

[rtstrider]

Yeah, just giving my procedure as a means to find out why @Ninoid is disappointed by the taste/flavour of kveik voss
I live in a hot climate and Voss Kveik has been a life saver

From my experience Voss is a yeast that is very prominent in the flavor profile of the finished beer. The first batch I brewed was orange city, with acidic properties, and nothing else really came out. So the next batch I figured why not use that to the advantage of the beer? A nice 20+ ibu fwh addition of Columbus really helped tame that. Now thing is the finished product was around 36 ibus or so. Personally I wouldn't go any lower than that in another Voss beer fermented around 100F. The other thing that's really helped this most recent batch is cold conditioning. It was good and drinkable at 1 week in the keg (after gelatin) but it's much more enjoyable after 2 weeks and has really smoothed out. Decided to give this one more week or so in the keg to round out a bit more. Will say this batch made Voss go from being a...Meh....Yeast to a very desirable yeast! So much so this will probably go on a somewhat normal rotation at the house

 

[hottpeper13]

All the Kveik beers I've brewed were better after 3-4 weeks in the 33* lagerator. They are drinkable way earlier then most ale yeasts,but I have yet to taste the tang or offness of any Kveik when conditioned. Having a tasty beer in 3-4 weeks is amazing to me ,when most of mine are G to G in 6-8 weeks.

 

[Panderson1]

Anyone harvest this VOSS multi generations? I thought I read somewhere Kveik can get funky pretty quick on re harvest?

 

[rtstrider]

Anyone harvest this VOSS multi generations? I thought I read somewhere Kveik can get funky pretty quick on re harvest?

I have an extra sachet and have played with the idea of making a 1L 1.040 starter, pitching the sachet, then banking up the slurry in the freezer bank for giggles. I will say I toyed with bottle harvesting this on the last batch. This stuff was a beast! Was fired up from bottle dredges, and fully krausened, in 24 hours or so in the starter wort jar.

 

[balrog]

Anyone harvest this VOSS multi generations? I thought I read somewhere Kveik can get funky pretty quick on re harvest?

Never bothered as I pitched 1/3 of the 11g packet per 4 gallon batch.

 

[lumbergh]

I've only repitched Lutra slurry. A spoonful for 2 gallons was sufficient. No starter. No noticable taste difference.

 

[Albionwood]

Anyone harvest this VOSS multi generations? I thought I read somewhere Kveik can get funky pretty quick on re harvest?

Whoever wrote that didn't know the first thing about kveiks. They have been harvested and reused for generations - human generations, not yeast generations. This evolutionary history makes them extraordinarily stable.

eta: I harvested and reused my Voss (originally from Omega) so many times I lost count. As far as I could tell it didn't change at all, even though I was bottom-harvesting and Voss is supposed to be top-cropped.

 

[Panderson1]

^ Thanks. I am on my 4th gen and loaded up! Summer is coming in Florida so the garage can get in 100s gonna do a bunch of experiments this summer.

 

[225]

I brewed a 8% Stout with Voss. I currently have my fermentation fridges set at 78F and I'm on day 3. I pitched it over 100F and literally in 30 minutes I was getting movement on the air lock.

I'm thinking it will be done in a couple days.

 

[Ninoid]

One of the things you kinda want is to underpitch to express the orangey/tangeriney esterds of the Voss Kviek.

Like, **WAY** underpitch.

I used one bag of dry Voss yeast for one batch, as I put in the other yeasts. Would I avoid such a citrus flavor if I used half a bag or even less?

 

[balrog]

I used one bag of dry Voss yeast for one batch, as I put in the other yeasts. Would I avoid such a citrus flavor if I used half a bag or even less?

I cannot speak to how to use Voss to get clean ferment flavor-I was always after the orange, which for me was always more tangerine/dark orange.

 

[CascadesBrewer]

I used one bag of dry Voss yeast for one batch, as I put in the other yeasts. Would I avoid such a citrus flavor if I used half a bag or even less?

Personally, I have brewed the same recipe with pitching a very small amount of harvested Omega Voss and with pitching an entire pack of Lallemand Voss. I cannot say I could tell the difference in the yeast character. There was a longer lag time with the underpitched Omega Voss. Fermented around 85F, both had a pronounced sweet orange character. I am pretty sure that some of the studies by Escarpment Labs showed that pitch rate had minimal impact on yeast flavors.

Note, that I have not found any real info on the cell count in a pack of Lallemand Voss.

 

[Alan Reginato]

This is the first time I used Voss. I split a batch with BE-134. An IPA with Zeus, but no DH, just a good flameout addition.
At 35 C, ended up in 4 days. But no f***ing way it was done. I mean, you can force carb boil wort, if you want to. But just at bottling, after 3 weeks, it seems to be really finished.

Anyway, it smells like tangerine or orange peel. Nice. But it taste like a bitter tangerine or orange peel. I don't know if it's the best combination. Citrus and bitter. Maybe if I let it maturing a while. Usually I find out that beer need at least 2 months to be good.

Did you have such experience with Kveik in IPA?

 

[Miraculix]

I used one bag of dry Voss yeast for one batch, as I put in the other yeasts. Would I avoid such a citrus flavor if I used half a bag or even less?

No, you would get even more of it

 

[CascadesBrewer]

I am pretty sure that some of the studies by Escarpment Labs showed that pitch rate had minimal impact on yeast flavors.

I might be wrong. I looked closer at the study. I am not positive if this is the latest, but it is probably the one I was thinking about (from 2019):
https://escarpmentlabs.com/blogs/resources/the-impact-of-pitch-rate-on-kveik-ferments
It does say the following:

Based on this analysis, it looks like there is a trend for increased aroma intensity for some of the kveiks (Voss and Hornindal) as the pitch rate decreases. However, this is not true for Arset and Ebbegarden, where the trends are less clear. So this tells us that there is not a one-size-fits-all rule for kveik pitch rate and aroma production.

Factoring in fermentation rate, fermentation specs and aroma production, we think that 7 million cells / mL strikes a good balance between the low and high pitch rate, but that the sweet spot could be somewhere between the two. We have done collaboration brews with partner breweries at around the 3 million cell / mL rate with good results and minimal impact on fermentation kinetics.

If my maths are correct for 5.5 gallons of wort

• 7 mill cells / ml = 146B cells
• 3 mill cells / ml = 62B cells
• 1 mill cells / ml = 21B cells

Note, that I have not found any real info on the cell count in a pack of Lallemand Voss.

If I looked at the Lallemand site I would have seen "Viability ≥ 5 x 10^9 CFU per gram of dry yeast." A 11g pack should have 55B cells or more. If that 55B cell value is correct (some people claim that most dry yeast packs have much more yeast than the minimum), then one pack of Lallemand Voss seems to be a decent pitch rate based on the Escarpment Labs study.