White Labs WLP570 Temperature

[jakead]

I am brewing the Golden Celeia from Austin Homebrew sometime this week and had a queston about the ideal fermentation temp for the yeast. I haven't read the instructions yet but I have read that some people pitch around 68 and let it sit then raise it up to the 78-80 range. This will be my first belgian type beer so I am new to the process.

Any thoughts or experiences?

 

[maida7]

I think if you start that hot you will have some hot fusel alcohol flavors and the esters will be way out of control.

I recommend you pitch at 64F and then slowly rise to 70 over the course of a week. Then keep it at 70F for another week to let it fully attenuate.

Also, it's very important to make a starter with liquid yeast. Check the yeast pitching calculator on mrmalty.com. Do not under pitch.

 

[2bluewagons]

Funny you should ask, I've been searching for just this issue. Try searching on here for "belgian strong" and you'll get some related threads.

I have a Belgian Golden Strong going right now, I pitched in the evening of 1/14 at 64, kept it under 67 fort the first 72 hours and then been raising the temp in the morning and night by one or two degrees each time. The goal is to get to 82 by week's end. This is to reduce over-production of fusel alcohols, esters, and phenols in the beginning of fermentation when those compounds are mainly produced and then as fermentation slows, increasing temperature to ensure high attenuation for the low FGs most Belgians call for.

I adapted this procedure from the advice given in the Brewing Network's Jamil Show in the Golden Strong episode (also followed the recipe for this batch), modifed to match my schedule of being out of town a few days here and there. In the show, it was recommended a 64-82 degree rise over a week.

This is my first time doing this, so I will let you know how it goes. Right now at 74F there is a little bit of bannana smell coming out of the airlock, but not too strong.

I'd be interested to hear other experience of using this method or other temperature scenarios for this yeast. I'm expecting a lot out of this beer and hoping to make this yeast a regular.

 

[2bluewagons]

I haven't read the instructions yet...

One more thing, be wary of instructions. Folks at a few different HBS's have said that the temp range given by White Labs is very generous. It says to keep the beer above 70 degrees between pitching and start of fermentation just so that they don't have to field calls complaining of long lag times. It would be better to seek out real experience for each strain and base your temp off of recommensations. For example I have heard of WLP001 fermenting just fine down in the low 50s.

 

[maida7]

Funny you should ask, I've been searching for just this issue. Try searching on here for "belgian strong" and you'll get some related threads.

I have a Belgian Golden Strong going right now, I pitched in the evening of 1/14 at 64, kept it under 67 fort the first 72 hours and then been raising the temp in the morning and night by one or two degrees each time. The goal is to get to 82 by week's end. This is to reduce over-production of fusel alcohols, esters, and phenols in the beginning of fermentation when those compounds are mainly produced and then as fermentation slows, increasing temperature to ensure high attenuation for the low FGs most Belgians call for.

I adapted this procedure from the advice given in the Brewing Network's Jamil Show in the Golden Strong episode (also followed the recipe for this batch), modifed to match my schedule of being out of town a few days here and there. In the show, it was recommended a 64-82 degree rise over a week.

This is my first time doing this, so I will let you know how it goes. Right now at 74F there is a little bit of bannana smell coming out of the airlock, but not too strong.

I'd be interested to hear other experience of using this method or other temperature scenarios for this yeast. I'm expecting a lot out of this beer and hoping to make this yeast a regular.

In Jamil we trust. I'd follow his recommendations. That guy seams to know what he's doing. Perhaps he ramps the temp way up at the end to make sure it dries out. This beer really needs to be dry and that can be hard to do with such a high SG. I'd do it the Jamil way and see how it turns out. You can always tweak it the second time around.

 

[2bluewagons]

Update on this one, after 7 days of fermentation with the temperature ramping I described above I had reached 82 degrees F. I left it at 82 for a day (it was at 1.010 at that time), then down to 75-76 for a week for yeasty clean-up time. Now it's cold-crashing to drop some of that yeast before bottling.

And despite what I read elsewhere, I added all the sugar to the boil (last 10 minutes) instead of after primary fermentation. I think I just pitched a big enough starter to offset the yeast's tendency to eat the sugar first, then maltose next.

OG was 1.076 which was 4 pts higher than the recipe and it still hit the predicted FG of 1.007!! 90% AA, although there is over 20% sucrose in the recipe so that certainly helped.

Will have to wait and see how this procedure worked for getting the right flavor profile from the yeast, but so far looks good!

 

[lemy]

I have one going now. OG 1.092 and after 10 days in the primary I am only down to about 1.041... I was beginning to get concerned until reading some of the posts about it taking a while to get down to full attenuation.

I did boil sugar into the wort to reach the high OG.
My fermentation began at around 68degrees, after 4 days of intense fermentation I stepped it up 1 degree daily.

I'm really hoping to hit a FG of 1.014

side not, I'm get clove aromas from it right now.

 

[jakead]

Major cloves in this one if I recall correctly.