I see in the main Kveik thread some mentions of lower temperature fermentations with kveik. I don't have a kegerator (just a fridge) and at the moment just bog standard 25l plastic fermenters. I'd be interested in trying a kveik yeast, probably in the garage so temps from 18C and lower now, probably in a neipa where a bit of residual haze wouldn't be an issue.
From experience what strain would be best suited to this application? I'm planning on getting a pressure fermenter at some point so a clean yeast which clears quickly would mean I could use the fermenter as a keg so a neipa would have a fighting chance against oxidation and be drinkable while fresh.
Paul.
No clue about pressure fermenting, but for your purposes pretty much any non sour kveik will do you fine. Fermenting at lower temperatures means it'll be less fruity than it could be and will take a few days longer to reach its final gravity.
I've done Oslo, Stranda, and Midtbust at room temp. TBH unless I'm brewing a pseudolager I want the fruit, so most of my experience is with higher temperatures. At higher temperatures "beer in a week" is possible with these three strains, even including some bottle conditioning time.
I can give you a couple of pointers that might be useful though. Firstly, kveik can handle hops a bit differently to other yeasts- some strains accentuate the bitterness, and a lot of aroma/flavour characteristics can be thrown off during fermentation. I'm not much of a hop head but I've been experimenting with later additions and am planning to try dry hopping. Dry hopping seems to be the thing for getting hop flavours into kveik brewed beer.
Secondly, if you are going to leave it in the fermenter for a while before bottling/kegging and you plan to use secondary fermentation to carb it, don't be surprised if it fails to wake back up! People using it commercially often use a neutral tasting strain of champagne yeast such as Lallemand EC-1118 to condition their beer. This is something I'm about to try on part of my present batch.
Alternatively, bottle or keg it as soon as it reaches its FG, and it'll happily devour the priming sugar. Some people bottle it without priming since the farmhouse kveiks at least (not isolates) are good at slowly chuntering on for a while in the bottle and producing the needed CO2. I think this might only be a good idea in relatively high gravity low carb brews, ideally ones you've tried before so you know with some certainty where the FG will be.
Another thing, especially if you are brewing low gravity, don't forget the yeast nutrient! Double or quadruple what you would normally put in. Kveik is greedy! It also produces more of a pH drop than other types of beer yeast, so if you have soft water you will need to bump up your calcium, chloride and sulphate levels. This made a huge difference to me. Get yourself a cheap set of electronic lab scales though, kitchen scales are not accurate enough.
If you want to do higher temperatures, B&M does a "bullet bin" for £8 that is a good fit for 25L fermenters. Simply fill it about 1/4-1/3 full with water, drop in an aquarium heater (100 watt one will do) and float the fermenter on top. As long as there is enough water that the fermenter isn't touching the heater you'll be fine. I like to call this the bobbing bucket method.
Pictured: 12L of pale ale that I'm presently fermenting at 33 degrees with Raftesvold Gard.
This setup is good up to 33 degrees C, beyond that you'll need a thermostat and some kind of tub heater.
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