Hoegaarden Yeast starter

[kurtz]

Pharmaboy is apparently convulsing in laughter about my (and MJs) broad staement about Belgian Beers.

Having (like many others) brewed using the hoegaarden yeast in the bottle, it is absolutely, positively, without doubt a wheat style yeast, huge krausen, right phenlics blah blah blah. While it is possible that hoe use a different yeast in primary to secondary, they do use a wheat in botle, and its very likely extraordinarily similar to that offered by wyeast, that purprts to be the same.

Sorry lads I thought that (and said so ) that Hoegaarden was a Wit which is just a little differnt from a Weizen. If I may quote from the BJCP guidelines

15A. Weizen/Weissbier

Aroma: Moderate to strong phenols (usually clove) and fruity esters (usually banana). The balance and intensity of the phenol and ester components can vary but the best examples are reasonably balanced and fairly prominent. Noble hop character ranges from low to none. A light to moderate wheat aroma (which might be perceived as bready or grainy) may be present but other malt characteristics should not. No diacetyl or DMS. Optional, but acceptable, aromatics can include a light, citrusy tartness, a light to moderate vanilla character, and/or a low bubblegum aroma. None of these optional characteristics should be high or dominant, but often can add to the complexity and balance.

Yep, we have phenolics (and I assume the "right phenlics" )
So lets have a look at Wit

16A. Witbier

Aroma: Moderate sweetness (often with light notes of honey and/or vanilla) with light, grainy, spicy wheat aromatics, often with a bit of tartness. Moderate perfumy coriander, often with a complex herbal, spicy, or peppery note in the background. Moderate zesty, orangey fruitiness. A low spicy-herbal hop aroma is optional, but should never overpower the other characteristics. No diacetyl. Vegetal, celery-like, or ham-like aromas from certain types of spices are inappropriate. Spices should blend in with fruity, floral and sweet aromas and should not be overly strong.

mmm.. phenlics might be cool for a wheat beer or a weissbier or a weizen but not it seems for a Wit, oh BTW spicy wheat aromatics are not phenolic band aid leftovers but a particular nose that raw wheat imparts.

K

[pharmaboy]

OK then, without been demeaning or sarcastic, I'll ask, do you still stand by the statement that all of the belgian's, (say 120 or so breweries with 7 or 8 beers each perhaps) pasteurise or otherwise kill the original yeast and replace it with a bottling strain?

I cant quite figure out why style figures in your post, certainly wyeast considers wit to be a wheat yeast, wit and weizen been subgroups of wheat styles. (I hop is was obvious that I wasnt trying to describe the yeast profile - blah blah blah been a dead giveaway). Are you claiming that that the bottle yeast is a weizen and not a wit? - I am at a loss to explain why hoegaarden would do that -

Which brings us to the further point about the wyeast wit yeasts. If what you say is indeed correct about a differing bottling strain, and the breweries guard their yeast with thier life - then where does wyeast get their strains from? Are they the original? 3944 perhaps?

http://www.wyeastlab.com/beprlist.htm#whe

BTW, what breweries say and do are often different - its called disinformation - If i was them i wouldnt be broadcasting to the world that wyeast sells our special abbey yeast cultured over centuries for $11.95, would you?

[shane_vor]

PISSING COMPETITION!

[kurtz]

OK then, without been demeaning or sarcastic, I'll ask, do you still stand by the statement that all of the belgian's, (say 120 or so breweries with 7 or 8 beers each perhaps) pasteurise or otherwise kill the original yeast and replace it with a bottling strain?

Is that what I said ? I thought I said

Michae Jackson is indeed correc. These breweries guard their yeast intensely and are of course not going to send their main yeast strain around the world in a thouand and one ships. Iam not certain about Coopers but certainly all the Belgian Bottle conditioned beers use a bottling yeast, fairly bland and unremarkable yeast that is not likely to go ga-gas under various changing environments.

Do I see any mention of pasteurisation or otherwise, perhaps its written in a sort of Da Vinci Code in my mail. We areBTW talking about Hoegaarden here and as NickMoore said no lesser authority than Mr Michael Jackson points out that Hoegaarden use a different strain in the bottle than the fermentor.

I cant quite figure out why style figures in your post, certainly wyeast considers wit to be a wheat yeast, wit and weizen been subgroups of wheat styles.

Why does style figure in my post , perhaps it was direct reply to your comment

Having (like many others) brewed using the hoegaarden yeast in the bottle, it is absolutely, positively, without doubt a wheat style yeast, huge krausen, right phenlics

I apologise , I thought it would be best to point out the independant guidlines but you poor pharmaboy obviously have no concept that wheat beers (typically Bavarian Weizen and Weissbeir) are actually quite different from Wit beers. You go on to say that that both are sub groups of wheat beers, well, they are not. Bavarian Weizen and weissbeers use up to around 50% malted wheat, Wit uses around 50% unmalted wheat ..unmalted wheat is not malted wheat, unmalted barley is not malted barley. Irish stouts use unmalted barley as well as malted barley, English Porters generally would not use unmalted barley, but they both use a hell of a lot of malted barley, as do English bitters and Bavarian Pilseners... sure all of these are sub-groups (love that word) of beer and with the exception of BP all are sub-groups of ale.
Of course I am being a bit boring here, preaching I guess to the unconverted (brewers joke)

Are you claiming that that the bottle yeast is a weizen and not a wit? - I am at a loss to explain why hoegaarden would do that -

I guess that pharmaboys claim that I claim that Hoegaarden use a Weizen runs pretty parrallel with those who claim to make a Wit and first of all decide that they do not need to use the ingredient that makes up 50% of the ingedients !!

K

[NickMoore]

this from chris colby, the editor of BYO:

"Other beers that are well-known to have yeast that can be cultured and brewed with are Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, Chimay, some Rogue beers and some of the beers from Kalamazoo Brewing (Bell's). Also, see the recipe on page 50 for Ommegang Abbey Ale, which can be brewed with yeast cultured from a bottle."

the bold empasis is mine.

ommegang is american.

http://www.byo.com/departments/1361.html

[Tipsy]

I'm really pissed at the moment so i havent got a clue but as all good drunks i'll give my 2c.
why wouldnt a brewery use their fermentation yeast for bottling, surely if another company wanted to pinch the strain it would be already exposed too much to the elements to be viable for a copy

[NRB]

A few things to remember though...
You need about 10 Billion yeast cells for a 19 litre batch

Actually, if you pitch this amount, you're significantly underpitching. The late great Geroge Fix stated an ale pitching rate of around 1 million cells of viable yeast for every milliliter of wort for every degree plato. This would mean pitching just under 240 billion cells for a 19L batch of 1.050 wort (1x10^6 x 19x10^3 x 12.5).

I still stand by my post in early December - culturing the yeast was easy, the beer was crud.

[kurtz]

I still stand by my post in early December - culturing the yeast was easy, the beer was crud.

Precisely...there is no easily found end of the rainbow and not many pots of gold to be found anyway.
If you want to culture yeast up from whatever source do it properly, streak a petrie dish of malt mixed agar and pick out the viable colonies and build from there..do not ever expect a few million cells at best of clagged out half sleeping yeast cells from the the bottom of the bottle to compete very well with an environment full of hungry horny wild yeasts and their mates when you toss it all into a perfect medium for reproduction...

[NRB]

Kurtz, my argument was not to support yours of plating being paramount - mine's about the fact the yeast is not the fermenting strain. I'm a scientist and as such approach things that way. I'm confident in my sanitation and have cultured yeasts from bottles successfully on many occasions both via plating and tossing into sterile wort.

When I culture I step up the starter with STERILE wort utilising several steps. When I reach pitching point (2L+), I always smell and taste the starter to determine its status and the cultured Hoegaarden yeast smelt and tasted perfectly acceptable.

The final fermented beer though, wasn't even remotely similar to Hoegaarden . It wasn't infected, it was just a bad beer.

I do however agree that culturing via agar plating is the best approach.