Lallemand kolsch yeast

[Snoop]

Anyone used this? I posted a while back about realising I only had a single packet half way through brew day so had to under pitch it. It fermented out to about 1.011. Lagered it and it's dropped crystal clear but the beer has absolutely no flavour. It's pretty poor. Honestly tastes what I imagine bud light tastes like. It's really quite odd.

It was 95% weyermans pilsner, 5% weyermans vienna and 18 IBUs of Hallertauer. Used this recipe a few times and it works well. So it's gotta be the yeast. It's not got any off flavours or flavours I can usually identify as a fault, it's got little to no flavours at all. And no body. It was fermented quite cool despite the underpitch as I was also fermenting a proper lager in the fridge underneath it. Maybe this was 14-15c inside the beer.

Anyone else had this?

Edit: the only other theory I had was that I forgot to take my final OG reading and it was way out, the GF app has the recipe at 1.049 and usually I'll quickly check it and if it's close enough I don't usually record anything. I rarely miss the numbers by much let alone enough to make the beer taste like the OG was 1.030.

 

[RGeats]

I have brewed 3 kolsch's now, 2 using liquid yeast, one using lallemand yeast. The 2 with liquid yeast were far superior, I was (as you were) disappointed with the lallemand yeast. I don't know the reason for this, but next time I brew a kolsch I'm going to use a liquid yeast again!

 

[RGeats]

I'd add I seem to remember it did get a bit better with longer conditioning, if that is any comfort!

 

[Snoop]

I have brewed 3 kolsch's now, 2 using liquid yeast, one using lallemand yeast. The 2 with liquid yeast were far superior, I was (as you were) disappointed with the lallemand yeast. I don't know the reason for this, but next time I brew a kolsch I'm going to use a liquid yeast again!

Aye well given a) it costs the same as liquid yeast given the pitch rate and b) tastes nothing like a kolsch think I'll be giving it a miss in future. I'm slightly perplexed by it tho. 95% weyermans pilsner is a malt bill I use frequently. Saisons, pilsners, kolsch and I can't recall a single time I couldn't taste the malt. It's great stuff no matter what yeast you use normally. So not certain something else wasn't at play here.

Last night I pushed 3 litres of swartzbier into the keg to give it some life. It's now a pretty dark amber lager hybrid. Which is a vast improvement.

 

[Richard_H]

I have but this was my first kolsch so probably not the best person to ask, the yeast performed far better than expected so the beer was a little thin but still enjoyable. I used a good portion of Munich malt which really shines through.

I also have no brew fridge so no lagering was done, despite being around 18-20 degrees the yeast look nearly 4 weeks to finish and needed 4-5 weeks in the bottle.