Kveik - worth the hype? Best beer style? Best fermenting temp?

[grooves]

Title says it all. Like many things in my life the kveik hype has slightly passed me by. However, I want to try it out soon - what are the best styles for this yeast? and what's the best temperature for fermentation - does it need to be controlled or just pitch at a certain temperature and let it do its own thing? Any recipe pointers?

 

[peebee]

Ah ... you are on the wrong forum! Repeat that question elsewhere and it might be met with a close to apoplectic inducing outburst (from someone living up there too).

I've not tried it, nor would I waste my time, but you already have what might probably be the best descriptor ... "hype".

 

[Sadfield]

In fairness Kveik has passed most of brewing by, for hundreds of years, if anything the antithesis of hype. Kept alive (literally) by a small number of brewers following family or local traditions.

Try this for an introduction.
https://beerandbrewing.com/amp/brew...-we-learned-so-far/?__twitter_impression=true
And this, particularly Larsblog, for a deeper dive.

https://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/threads/kveik-resources.89513/

 

[Oneflewover]

It's largely passed me by too. I'm sure it has its place, and I have used it in the summer during periods of high temperature and made decent beer, but I don't get the 'hype' either

 

[An Ankoù]

Try it if you must. I've found Voss most disappointing as it gives too much of it's own character to the beer. Opshaug, on the other hand, fermented at reasonable temperatures and left to mature has proved to be a decent yeast.
I was attracted to try kveik because it'll make beer when the weather's too hot to make beer. And it does. It's just a different kind of beer.

 

[the_quick]

It makes great yeast for the hot summer and does it quick. I have tried voss at 35 degrees and beer was finished in 3 days and matured quickly as well. It is good for this kind of job. But as I guess we mostly brew in room temps, it doesn't give any advantage to usual types we use.

 

[fury_tea]

I've used it.a few times, had mostly great experiences and the quickness of it is no joke. I used Voss for my most recent NEIPA, which was grain to glass in 8 days but could've been quicker. Bloody lovely as well.
Used Ubbe in a pilsner urquell type clone recipe and it came out pretty good, but not as clean as a lager yeast.
I've had one failure (still not quite sure what happened). My beer wasn't undrinkable but it did taste like old musty books.

My most recent venture is a hopped cider so see how that goes!

 

[Zephyr259]

I wasn't intended to do so but all my beer in 2019 were brewed with kveik, mostly Voss, a couple with Saure and Hornindal, they make good beers, my experience was with farmhouse strains not commercial isolates. My strain of Voss developed an issue where it would have a slow secondary fermentation in the bottle after about 4 months which would lead to over-carbonated bottles, still drinkable but a pain to pour.

I never got the orange and spice from Voss, more of a strong earthy character which worked nicely in a stout but not in other styles, no one else seemed to get it as strongly, although An Ankou's experience sounds familiar. Saure was good, much more mild, but again it was used in a stout, Hornindal brewed 2 beers, one came out clean the other had a belgian/banana kinda thing going on which wasn't good for the style being a British Golden Ale.

A final thing I noticed was that all my kveik beers had a lot of body and never seemed crisp or refreshing so I swapped back to standard strains in 2020 and carried on with other brewing projects.

 

[An Ankoù]

It makes great yeast for the hot summer and does it quick. I have tried voss at 35 degrees and beer was finished in 3 days and matured quickly as well. It is good for this kind of job. But as I guess we mostly brew in room temps, it doesn't give any advantage to usual types we use.

I'd respectfully take issue: it's not a "great yeast" it's a family of yeasts, each with different characteristics like there are lager yeasts and they're all different. I know it's a branch of Sacch. cerevisiae, but this division is different to our trad ale yeasts, and, just like our familiar ale yeasts, has a wide range of characteristics within what is considered to be kveik.
If that makes any sense.

 

[Sadfield]

Yep. If you want to brew something at double the fermentation temp and expect the exact result of using commercial yeasts, then I wouldn't bother.

However, if you want another interesting and useful ingredient to be creative with, and broaden your horizons. Or, are interested in historical brewing techniques and ingredients, and have ever wondered what beer may have taste like before brewing became a commercial activity. Then give it a go.

 

[dad_of_jon]

It makes great yeast for the hot summer and does it quick. I have tried voss at 35 degrees and beer was finished in 3 days and matured quickly as well. It is good for this kind of job. But as I guess we mostly brew in room temps, it doesn't give any advantage to usual types we use.

so if global warning batters the uk - kveik is going to be the goto.

 

[Kye]

I'm new to brewing but I used the dried Voss strain from CrossMyLoof for my 1st ever Brewzilla batch, a clone of Kona Big Wave (badged as a Golden Ale). Fermented in the airing cupboard at c 26degC (quite cold for Kveik) and it absolutely ripped through, with really high attenuation of 85% going down to a final gravity of 1.006, which helped with the ABV as my mash efficiency was rubbish. Quite a dry finish on the beer but I feel it worked really well with the Citra/Galaxy/Mosaic hops.

I'm using Lallemand Verdant at the moment but would defo use the Kveik again in an IPA style with those kind of hops. An earlier attempt with brew in a bag I threw it into a lager malt bill with Hallertau and Perle hops, I think it was a moment of madness, but never again is all I'll say. That reminds me must get round to emptying those bottles down the sink.

Cheers

 

[Leon103]

Used it in a bipa which was a good beer. Can't say the yeast added anything and my second experience was in a ipa which had a funny taste that I put down to the yeast. Don't think I will go out of my way to use again. Both fermented high, 38c if I remember which made a funny smell in my fridge. This could have been the wooden shelve but I was worried about it impacting the beer

 

[DCBC]

As others have indicated it depends entirely on the strain.

Voss, or at least the Lallemand isolate I have used in the past, makes everything taste like orange squash mixed with Shloer. Stranda has a fair bit of of this and a bit of tropical fruit, Tormodgarden has only a hint of it, a little more tropical fruit, a touch of elderflower (IMO), but it also allows the malt to come through properly.

Play around with different strains at different temperatures and different recipes for long enough and it's almost certain you will find a perfect combination, but it takes a lot of trial and error. Luckily, as a family of yeasts, Kveik is so forgiving that you will be able to taste the fruit of your labours soon after the experiment begins, and you are extremely unlikely to ruin a batch by mistreating the yeast.

 

[Sadfield]

Possibly a massive generalisation, but I see a lot of people using kveik in basic setups, having no summer temperature control, and suspect they are replacing kit yeasts, notty or US05. Ending up with results that actually have some yeast character, which they aren't used to. Or even missing some off flavours.