Rare yeast, and I'm getting ahold of some!

[joshesmusica]

Some of you may have heard of Lars Marius Garshol, Norwrgian guy who has been doing in depth studies of farmhouse ales here and in Lithuania. If I'm not mistaken he had a hand in getting the Norwegian Farmhouse Ale strain produced at white labs.

That isn't the only farmhouse strain here, as it turns out there's lots of little farms around the country that have their own yeast strain that has been passed down for generations.

Well I got in contact with him, and as it turns out him and some friends have taken one such strain and propagated it and have sent it to homebrewers around the nation, who have propagated it and sent it on. And it just so happens that I'm going to get some next week!
I'm super excited as I was already planning on attempting a farmhouse ale using the same processes that he outlined on his blog from the farm this strain comes from!
It supposedly gives off some spice that's a little like Christmas spice flavor and an orange flavor and aroma. And the craziest part is that they pitch it at 40c! One guy even pitches at 43c.
Anyways just got really excited and wanted to share the news with this awesome community.

 

[drainpour]

That's is bad ass!!! I stumbled upon his blog post that talked about raw ale and kveik and I was hooked, I spent a good hour on his blog just reading.
That very exciting stuff post your results here when your done!

 

[joshesmusica]

Will do, just gotta figure out a safe and effective way to keep my ferment chamber around 40c!

 

[anticrapple]

i just read his blog for like 5 hours solid. i did see that you can buy the kveik strain from NCYC for like 140 ish US Dollars with a 70 ish dollars for shipping and handling. So you getting this for free is an awesome awesome thing.

any chance you would be willing to pass some of it down to the rest of us. would love to get my hands on this without spending $200.

 

[drainpour]

I second that^^

 

[joshesmusica]

I think he's working with one lab, though I can't remember which one (I'm sure it's on the blog somewhere), to get this developed and available to the masses. But who knows how long that will take?

I would be willing, even already had one pm about it. Though, I've never done a trade like this before, or a pay it forward type of thing. So I don't really know proper procedures for sending yeast. But I guess if this ones being fermented at 40c, then it could likely handle most shipping situations. I knew I should've been keeping back those WL empty vials for something!

 

[PoppinCaps]

This is an easy and cheap way to send yeast if you decide to go that route.

http://suigenerisbrewing.blogspot.ca/2013/04/mailing-yeast.html#A1

 

[badlee]

That is mega kick ass!
I contacted him about Lithuanian yeast before,without any joy

 

[anticrapple]

id be willing to pay the price for purchase of all the right mailing supplies and shipping cost to get it to me quickly. that way a cooled file or jar would be enough to get it to me in useable fashion.

thoughts?

 

[joshesmusica]

Pm me and we can talk (Although can't respond until later when I'm home, the mobile app is being dumb). I won't even be getting it until next week, going out of town for a few days.

 

[joshesmusica]

I'm planning on brewing in the traditional method as best I can with my equipment, but I'm not sure when I'll do that, cause the brew day can easily take 9 hours.
And I'm gonna see if some wild hops and wild Norwegian strawberries will be ready to pick this weekend on my trip. But I doubt it because it's been an unusually cool summer.

 

[badlee]

Well,bloody good luck with it.
Keep us up to date and post pictures.
Plz

 

[The_Glue]

Is the WLP6788 is an actual existing yeast or it just some kind of a cruel inside joke?

 

[joshesmusica]

It's an actual yeast, but actually I tried finding it on WL's site, and couldn't find anything. My lhbs carries it regularly now. It actually came from another farmhouse brewery.

 

[joshesmusica]

proof.

 

[sudbuddy]

Cool! Excited to see how this turns out

 

[nicolas_james]

Here's some stuff off of Milk the Funk.

"It is now possible for US customers to get this yeast drop-shipped from White Labs. If interested just send a e-mail to [email protected]"

 

[badlee]

Ha!
Now that seems worth an email

 

[Michigan_Wolfman]

Free is always good! :rockin:

 

[acarter5251]

Just shot off an email about the WLP6788

 

[joshesmusica]

That's my "lhbs." In quotations cause they're all over the country. They seem to be a pretty well put together company, and I get the feeling that it was just a bunch of homebrewers who needed a place to buy their stuff from. For being way up here, they always have a good variety of products from all over the world.

 

[badlee]

@joshesmusica
You have any idea how much postage might cost to Thailand?

 

[joshesmusica]

@joshesmusica
You have any idea how much postage might cost to Thailand?

i looked at that for sending packages of yeast from here to the US using posten.no. it seems it's one set international rate. No telling how long it takes. And no telling what conditions it would go through in that time. But it seems like it's around $33 US (depending on what the exchange rate is that day of course). Not sure how high temps the WL one can handle though.

 

[badlee]

Bugger!
That's me out

 

[The_Glue]

According to that blog the white labs strain is probably not the magic orange spicy strain.

 

[joshesmusica]

No the white labs strain is def not the same strain.

 

[acarter5251]

Got an email back about having the wlp6788 drop shipped from white labs. They currently have a hard time with international payments, but they are currently in talks with MoreBeer here in the states about carrying this strain to make it more accessible for home brewers here

 

[acarter5251]

No the white labs strain is def not the same strain.

I'd love to give the Voss strain a go, but the White Labs strain sounds like it could be interesting too

 

[joshesmusica]

alright got it last night. the guy filled a white labs vial with what seemed like a very weak starter. he decanted some of it for me to try and it had some character to it, but in general was very weak, and very watery.

there was definitely yeast in there, but there's no way for me to know how much, so i tried to look up step up starters, but all of them were giving advice on stepping up a normal sized vial to a large, high og batch. so i basically just decided to wing it.

i got onto beersmith and tried to see how much i would need of both water and extract in order to make a very small, 1.030 batch. it told me to go with 150g extract in 200ml water. This didn't seem quite right, but i started the boil anyways. It looked like molten syrup while it was boiling. i didn't like the looks of it, so i added more water. it probably amounted to around a half liter or a little over in the end. i whisked the hell out of it while i was cooling it to 40C. then i pitched the yeast and whisked the hell out of it again. then set it in my ferment chamber that i put a lamp in, in order to get that sucker up to 40C.

i should probably be shaking it really well and everything, but i don't have a stir plate, so i'm basically just letting it ferment as normal and shaking it every now and then. i plan to make a 1.040 (as much as i can guestimate) batch next and just pour it on top, since i've got plenty of room in the fermenter (it's a 6-liter bucket). i'm being way more careful about sanitation than i ever have been with my regular batches, because i really don't want any funky stuff getting in this thing. i've never had an infection, but they say that at our level you will always pick up small amounts of bacteria. not sure how much i believe that, but, yeah, just hoping this gets propagated into a bigger amount and stays pretty pure!

 

[PoppinCaps]

A normal starter is 100g DME in 1L of water which is around 1.040. That's a pretty heavy starter it's in. If it were me, I'd add some boiled and cooled water to it and aerate again.