Suggestions for belgian yeast

You have access to a ton of CO2 - drill a second hole in a stopper, and take your blowoff tube from your primary fermenter into your 5 gallon carboy, and then put an airlock in the second hole. Voila! CO2 blanket from the batch in your primary fermentor.

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Porkchop, you’re a dang genius! Thanks for the tip. Especially this early on a saturday!

Cheers,

Ron

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I like PCs idea. I’ve fermented 3 gallons in a 5 gallon bucket before without problems I just put the lid on and never opened it untill ready to bottle.

Yeah I wouldn’t worry at all except this is basically a bright tank so there won’t be any great amount of co2 produced.

Any ideas on the yeast slurry? Should I remove some or just rack onto the whole cake?

Cheers and thanks,

Ron

I’d pull bunch out… Belgium yeast can be coaxed into giving its flavor to the brew when made to work harder… Too much yeast and the wort gets a funny off flavor… I suspect the dead yeast is higher in volume per liter and contributes… say the word autolysis ? I don’t use the on line calculators which means I don’t know exactly how much to use, but from my perspective, if I pitch a quart starter, it has alot of liquid… It isn’t all yeast… Right? Sneezles61

Yep. Kinda the direction I was thinking. I (supposedly) stressed the yeast pretty well by pitching a single liquid pack with no starter to a 1.081 batch, but it took it down to .005. So I’d think it’s fairly healthy and I’d probably get closer to the flavor profile I’m looking for by under pitching this one a little too. Thanks Sneezles.

Cheers,

Ron

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The full cake is to much for a 5 gallon batch of most beers your Belgian you want less. Most beer I do calculates around 400ml slurry. For a Belgian I’d pitch about 200ml. How I do it is sanitize some quart mason jars swirl the bucket to get the creamy stuff and a little of the beer cap off the solid stuff which you want to leave most behind. Then fill the jars about 1)2 full. Keep them in the fridge it will settle down to about 400ml yeast slurry and 100ml beer cap

Ended up scooping out about 2/3 of the slurry and then just racked the wort on top of what was left. I’d say there was a good 12-14 ounces of slurry left in the carboy. took out much more than that.
Thanks for all the help.

The brew day went pretty well. Overshot post boil gravity by about 6 or 7 points but hey, it’s a belgian. No worries.

Cheers,

Ron

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How did it taste? I’m racking mine today or tomorrow. Im not ready to brew the next one so I’ll save the slurry in jars

Tasted fine. Still not quite as estery as I had hoped for, but plenty good.

Just sampled the blonde that’s fermenting on the second generation of the ardennes yeast. Down to .004 in a week, ambient temp during fermentation was around 70. Taste is very good, definitely has the belgian taste, not too funky though. I mashed at 154 to try and keep it from being too dry but that didn’t seem to factor in much haha. But at 7.25%, this one will be dangerous, the sample was quite “easy drinking”. Turns out I didn’t need a blowoff tube on either beer (but used one anyway)

Cheers,

Ron

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The OP here mentioned BE-256, which I’m really curious about. Anyone try it yet?

It’s the new default dry yeast in the belgian kits from our host. Used to be t-58 with the kits I think. I was very underwhelmed by the t-58 so that’s why I was a little leery of the 256.

Cheers,

Ron

I believe it used to be safbrew abbaye I think…I used it once…at one temp (64) and it wasn’t very belgiany :slightly_smiling_face:

I’m getting ready to use the second generation ardennes yeast again for our host’s duchesse de bourgogne clone. I have about a pint of unwashed yeast that’s about 7 weeks in the fridge under a cap of beer. I plan on a starter just to test viability. Any idea of the amount of slurry I should use in a 1500 ml starter? This beer is .070 OG so not a big task for this yeast I wouldn’t think. I’ve just never pitched yeast from a saved slurry before.

Thanks for any suggestions,

Ron

I’ve used BE 256 with the NB Houblonmonstre kit. It did an awesome job (needed a blow off tube) and left a great Belgian yeast character to the final product. It should be in its prime in 3-4 months.

I don’t make a starter with the slurry. I just warm it and pitch. You could get it activated and pitch at high krausen. I’ve done that but generally don’t bother

I made the starter last night about 8 pm so it’s been over 11 hours and no activity. Is that normal?

Swirl it a little bit.

Haha. I got up at 3:30 this morning and swirled it. Did it about 5 times before going to bed too. Twice this morning. Nothing.