Kveik

[BeerCat]

What was the pH before pitching? Could be you were lowering the pH from a high start point, so wouldn't necessarily notice any sourness given that beer is normally pretty acidic anyway.

I forgot to check but was using RO water so would
of thought it would be quite low?

 

[Sadfield]

So likely around 5.2 - 5.5. IIRC Lallemand recommend presouring with acid to around 4.5 pH before pitching Sour Pitch into unhopped wort.

 

[philt]

Hi, According to brewers friend there should of been 5 IBU's which i added to the mash. I doubt it was that much though as i could not detect any hops at all. I tried to pitch at 40c with the yeast but the belt was unable to maintain temp ( due to the particular FV i used) and it went down to the low thirties. I think it might work with more lacto.

The batch i just dumped smelled horrendous. I dumped it down the bog and had to open all the windows and bleach the toilet. I presume the "butyric stench" was the culprit. It started to reek about 5 hours after pitching the lacto.

Do you boil the wort first?

I always kettle sour before boiling, sometimes I don't even bother boiling. The butyric smelled like a baby puked on a sweaty sock full of ripe cheese, it's vile, I've had success boiling the stinky beer and then pitching brett for a lengthy secondary. The brett clears it all up over time and actually creates some really nice flavours from the butyric acid. The last time it happened I just dumped it as I didn't have any fermenter space for another lengthy brett secondary. Both times it's happened recently have been using L. Plantarum and both times I was low to mid 30s in the kettle.

Also as Sadfield mentions, using lactic acid to get to the pH of 4.5 before pitching the lactobacillus really helps!

Hopefully you have more luck next time!

 

[BeerCat]

Thanks Gents. It makes sense now. I remember reading you need to get the PH down. Do you think if i lowered the ph and pitched more lacto i could still manage to sour and ferment at the same time? And how much lactic acid is needed to bring 10l down 1? I have a feeling this beer could be great if i tweaked it a little. I r

I cant imagine boiling beer that smelled like that but its amazing you can pitch a different yeast and clean that up. So much to learn. Fascinating subject

 

[AdeDunn]

Thanks Gents. It makes sense now. I remember reading you need to get the PH down. Do you think if i lowered the ph and pitched more lacto i could still manage to sour and ferment at the same time? And how much lactic acid is needed to bring 10l down 1? I have a feeling this beer could be great if i tweaked it a little. I r

I cant imagine boiling beer that smelled like that but its amazing you can pitch a different yeast and clean that up. So much to learn. Fascinating subject

There's probably a formula for that somewhere, based on the percentage lactic acid etc. Me, I'd just take 100mls of wort, and titrate lactic acid into it with a graduated pipette (or, better still, a burette... lol) until the pH dropped by 1, which will give you the exact amount you need by just multiplying by 10.

 

[Zephyr259]

Opshaug kveik from @danbriant was pitched into an experimental split brew dunkelweizen to make a wheatwine braggot. I spilt the wort pre-boil and boiled 7L separately on the stove for a hour which boosted the gravity to 1.065 (main beer was 1.047) it then got 2 jars of orange blossom honey after chilling and the starter which averaged out to 1.100.

Pitched half my stored yeast which was maybe about 12 billion cells into 500 ml of the first runnings at 20c, it foamed up nicely when I swirled it before pitching a couple of hours later. Just did the maths now and it works out to only 0.1 million cells/ml/P! I knew it was low but I didn't think it was that low.

Seems to have coped ok, after 5 days it was 1.033 and day 11 it was 1.023 and the krausen had finally fallen, tested in between and it is slowing down every time so will probably be done by midweek. At 10.5% the pipette sample is noticeably warming but think it should come good quickly like kveik does. First 5 days were at 20c while the dunkelweizen did the bulk of it's fermentation then I ramped up to 24c where the kveik would be happier (this one states 23.5c).

 

[BeerCat]

There's probably a formula for that somewhere, based on the percentage lactic acid etc. Me, I'd just take 100mls of wort, and titrate lactic acid into it with a graduated pipette (or, better still, a burette... lol) until the pH dropped by 1, which will give you the exact amount you need by just multiplying by 10.

I made the mistake of buying yet another cheap meter which would not stabilise. Threw it away so will have to wait until i can get a decent one. I tried dosing lactic acid in water and it tasted foul. I presume that must disappear in the mash the same was baking soda does.

As far as i understand if i culture up this yeast it should make a sour kveik. Been reading some articles by the mad fermentaionist.

 

[BeerCat]

Yesterday evening i made a no boil NEIPA. I pitched 5ml of slurry at 32c and within 3 hours it was bubbling away at 37c. I hope this massive under pitch will add some fruity esters. I Steeped 150g of hops at 75c which according to brewers friend will add 28 IBU's. Seemed to have a decent level of bitterness but if its not enough i have hop oil.
Tonight i am going to top crop some yeast and take a sample. I expect it will have finished fermenting by tomorrow morning. I think i will leave it at these temps for 72 hours then drop to 14c and do a massive dry hop. Only going to do one in the fermenter as i plan to dry hop the keg as well. Fingers crossed this will be on tap in a weeks time.

 

[SmallSpacesBrewing]

Just got my own kveik in the mail! Can't wait to try this thing out. I've been obsessed with it since I found that blog. Great thread guys! I'm also planning a massive underpitch. It's gonna be awesome!

 

[Zephyr259]

Well the Opshaug kveik did some odd things in my braggot. Went from 1.100 to 1.020 for 10.5%, was expecting lower due to 35% of the fermentables being from honey but it had been stable for almost a week. The reall odd bit was that the beer had a bunch of really hard bits in it which gave the siphon some issues and blocked the bottling cane, no idea what they were (partially cause my wife was bottling while I'm away), I'd thought they were maybe just really firm flocs but looked kinda vegetal and didn't squish apart when pressed. Apparently it tastes bizarre...

 

[BeerCat]

I think you could of added some amylase for higher attenuation, no idea if it would go over 10.5% though.
The last beer came out really nice. Voss is great for a hoppy wheat beer. Ready to drink in a week if you can cold crash. Still no detectable flavour from the yeast.

 

[Zephyr259]

Yeah, there wasn't much tinkering I could do as I got called offshore early so my wife's been doing most of the monitoring for me. I'm happy with 1.020 as it should have a bit of body to it, a common "fault" with braggots is that they lack body since the honey thins them out too much. I was considering adding lactose to counter this but glad I waited to see what it finished at. Just hope they don't blow up...

 

[AdeDunn]

Did you add any yeast nutrient at all? Everything I have read about Kveik is that if there is one factor that will limit it, it's nutrient availability. Honey is pretty sparse when it comes to nutrients, when making mead it's a must (pun not intended) to add some for example in some form. Could be it just ran out of micro-nutrients before it was able to finish munching on the macro-nutrients (the sugars). I tend to chuck 5mls (1 tspn) of Tronozymol in 5 minutes before the end of the boil for this reason. I know you don't need it with normal yeasts, but Kveik breaks all of the rules after all....

That said, comparing mash temp with attenuation, I've been seeing this:-

69 degree C mash (quite a few dark grains) : 78.5% apparent attenuation
67 degree C mash (no dark grains): 79.5% apparent attenuation

even with extra nutrients... I think 80% attenuation is maybe the highest you'll get, rather than what you will definitely get... That's with Yeast Bay Sigmund's Voss Kveik.

As to braggots coming out thin. The one I did I used Belle Saison, which has a strange ability to produce glycerol as it goes, which gives your beer body (you can glycerol to "age" wine and mead for the same reason). So you get a super dry beer, which isn't actually thin. It's a bit boring other than that though as yeasts go. The yeast formed a solid layer on the bottom of the bottles though, and is now peeling off in sheets when I serve it.... This is why I use glass bottles now, not PET....

Oh, and the golden ale I made with kveik, well odd one this. Dunno if the yeast esters are there, but what is there is far more hoppy aroma and flavour than there should be... I used 4g Admiral at 70 minutes for bittering, and 35g of Jester at 15 minutes for aroma and flavour, and the aroma is bonkers! Serious hempy notes (my wife goes nuts if I call it dank....) on the nose. Oh, it's a 14 litre batch (so ok, thinking about it, it's probably the equivalent of a lot more hops in a bigger batch... lmao).

Just bottled the chocolate & mint porter too. I lost 4.5 litres, somehow the tap came unscrewed on the FV and leaked out.... Tested a small sample after adding the essences, delicious! Not too much mint at all, and you could taste the chocolate nicely (with the vanilla giving the chocolate a nice roundness). Just thanks to the leak I only had 9 litres into bottles, rather than about 13.... My wife was a serious trooper, capping for me even though she has a really bad back! She put on her TENS belt and got the job done. She will be rewarded with the lions share of the porter naturally (she gets most of the beer anyway, as she should. I enjoy watching her enjoy my beer more than I enjoy drinking it myself. lol).

 

[Zephyr259]

Yeah, I had intended to add nutrients then totally forgot in the chaos of the split brew. A 1.065 wort should have enough nutrients to manage but maybe not.

 

[AdeDunn]

With normal yeast yeah, I don't trust Kveik though and put it in anyway just to be sure so it doesn't "burn itself out". Same reason I mash high, to slow it down a bit so it can't burn out and fade away. lol Seems to work, and doesn't finish at as high an fg as you'd expect a normal yeast to finish on a wort mashed at 69 degrees C.....

Oh yeah, and we bottled the golden ale.... So that's us set for Christmas. On to the new year brews now. Probably more porter, as it's just so easy to brew.

 

[Inkman]

After a long night and day I poured a pint from the keezer. 50:50 sourdough rye bread(toasted) and lager malt. 30g Citra dry hops. Thanks for the kveik yeast Beercat!!!!! Dried the washed yeast after kegging, made 2 litres of 1.080 OG beer, 2 flakes of dried kveik, judge for yourselves....it's a dragon yeast....

 

[stz]

Is anybody willing to send me some? I've some wet yeasts you can have back in return? Sort something out regardless, drop me a message

 

[AdeDunn]

So, thought that was it for my Voss stocks this brew. The remains of my overbuilt starter had a vinegar smell when I took it out of the fridge, so that got dumped, and I pitched the yeast I got from the golden ale krausen...

Nope... Got a TON (compared to the last top cropping I did that is...) from the krausen on my latest brew... Must have caught it bang on high krausen, as literally got a load... lol Slight scent of cherry to it, but never mind....

 

[SmallSpacesBrewing]

View attachment 16808 View attachment 16807 View attachment 16809 After a long night and day I poured a pint from the keezer. 50:50 sourdough rye bread(toasted) and lager malt. 30g Citra dry hops. Thanks for the kveik yeast Beercat!!!!! Dried the washed yeast after kegging, made 2 litres of 1.080 OG beer, 2 flakes of dried kveik, judge for yourselves....it's a dragon yeast....

Which kveik did you use and what was your FG

 

[BeerCat]

Is anybody willing to send me some? I've some wet yeasts you can have back in return? Sort something out regardless, drop me a message

If you can wait until i brew next. Sorry only just seen this.