New Nordic Yeast

[mashani]

Great read this morning Dave. Looks like you covered the traditions so far now just guard it with steel. Looking forward to the follow ups.

I did actually break a rule/tradition kind of... lots of the farmhouse brewers don't really measure stuff. They just make beer (buckets of this, barrels of that, home malted and roasted grains, chunk of yeast or suspend the yeast ring, etc.). I measured stuff, took OG reading... that's like fancy pants city boy crap LOL.

Do you have one of these?

http://gwyl.io/viking-beer-horn-glass/

At the price being asked... no... but I can find a cow horn version for $30 or so, so maybe I will get one of those.

[John Sand]

Interesting stuff, thanks for sharing.

[mashani]

So it fermented quite well. I think that hydrometer is wrong though, I think it's a couple of points higher. I'm going to test some that I saved with my other hydrometer.

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It has no brett pinapple taste and didn't pellicle, so it was just the 3 strain yeast blend that did that damage. There was 20% sugar (honey) in it though.

It is lightly sweet, only a little bit spicy from the Juniper (not gin like in any way), has a bit of anise from the crystal rye.

It is not very phenolic. Much more estery. Phenols are more lightly peppery, not strongly clove like.

It smells strongly like some combination of honeysuckle, pears, and orange blossoms. The aroma is quite amazing considering there were no finishing hops, or hops in the boil, the hops were only boiled in the water used to mash. They were Triskel which is very floral, but I wasn't expecting it to do much in the finished product. But I think it's kicking up the aroma of the esters the yeast made. My whole basement smells like this now.

It tastes very much of ripe pears and ripe sweet apples (not bitter apple / acetaldehyde), with some orange and light spice. No strong banana. If you want to make a beer with fruity esters but little banana, at least so far this seems to be a good yeast choice, we will see more as I make other beers with it.

FWIW, this fermented mostly between 74-76 degrees, the warmest it got was about 78, post active fermentation I let it drop down into the low 60s. (I know some strains in this blend will ferment in the 50s, so I wasn't worried about it finishing).

I bottled it with very little sugar (1 Dominos dot per 740ML), these beers would traditionally be uncarbonated, but I wanted a little. I did throw a small bottle of it in the fridge as is without any sugar, and I will probably drink some of it later tonight.

[mashani]

So FYI, I'm drinking that flat bottle I threw in the fridge. So this stuff even flat and just over 2 1/2 weeks old (as in from when I pitched the yeast, not age in the bottle) is really good as is. You could probably use even more honey then I did. A lot more if you wanted to dry it out and/or had a higher OG then this.

It has a little bit more clove and banana characteristic then I noticed at first when it's cold, but get suppressed as it warms up and the other fruit and floral stuff comes out. Even cold both are still subtle. The aroma I described is suppressed a good bit when cold, but it comes back out full force as it warms up a bit. Some carbonation will help with that, but either way this is likely best served somewhere in the 50 degree range to get the full effect.

It will be interesting to see how this ages, I think the traditional stuff is consumed quickly.

In any case, I like it... a lot. It is very smooth, so smooth I drank the whole glass pretty quickly once it warmed up... but now I'm starting to notice that it has a good bit of alcohol (internally, not taste perception... it's 7.7% or something like that). My hydrometer didn't lie. My bet is Vikings got into lots of bar fights LOL.

This stuff will make good Belgians, I think both light and dark ones, and good Wheat beers of a more "German" style along the lines of as if you were to use
something like Wyeast 3638 Bavarian Wheat Beer Yeast, NOT Weihenstephan strain. It's much less "in your face clove and banana" and more complex then Weihenstephan is. It's actually really much less in your face then Wyeast 3638 too from the traditional wheat beer perspective. It has more "other stuff" and less of the traditional wheat beer stuff.

And I think anything with honey or fruit in it.

I'd seriously consider using this yeast strain to make a sweet mead if I had the time to spend making mead. I think it would turn out delicious, especially with a floral and/or fruity honey.

Maybe I'll do something like a Braggot with fruit... I think that would turn out most excellent.

I'm glad I have more of this yeast and I'd certainly buy it again.

[mashani]

So I decided to do a fruited Belgian with next batch. Basically like a dubbel with Tart Cherry Candi Syrup and a little bit of oak smoked wheat, because I think it will go nice with the cherry. I know the cherry will be very mellow, based on experience with this stuff, it's not "in your face" in any way. More of something interesting in the background...

So for 5.5 gallons... I just mashed:

1# Belgian Pale
1# Oak Smoked Wheat
4oz Aromatic
4oz Special B

And added as late additions @10:

7# MoreBeer Extra Light LME
1# Cascade Tart Cherry Candi Syrup (also from MoreBeer)

I just did small bittering addition using some of the Southern Star hops I got in that South African hops box, to get me to around 20 IBUs. The stuff is stupid high AA, so when I say small, I mean small, like 1/3rd of an ounce.

New Nordic Yeast.

Normally I don't use Special B and instead use 180L or 90L candi syrup, but since I was using the Tart Cherry stuff, I went the other way.

OG was 1.064

[mashani]

This yeast blend is very interesting. So the batch above, big krausen, started to fall, then it has now re-krausened somewhat. It did that in the last batch too. One or two of the yeasts must get involved up front, then another one or two must take over more later and each does their own little party.

Both batches smelled like a normal fermentation up front, but then at this point where it was doing the re-krausen thing, this lovely fruity and floral aroma starts to come out of my fermenter. It's like honeysuckle and orange blossoms, ripe pears, peaches and apples...

I thought it might have been related to the hops I used in the last batch (Triskel) because they are very floral, but I mash hopped (even less then mash hopped, really I literally boiled the hops in the water that went into the mash, along with juniper), so was surprised it came through like that.

But apparently that wasn't they why of it, and this yeast just makes wonderful floral aromas on it's own. They certainly aren't coming from the hops I used in this batch.

I know that the Torulaspora delbrueckii is used in some types of wine production as part of a mixed culture (like in Sauternes) because it helps to reduce the acidity and enhance the flavors/aromas of the product compared to a straight up wine strain.

I found this research paper too, which seems to suggest that the Torulaspora delbrueckii produces and stimulates other yeast strains to produce more and different esters then they would all on their own.

http://www.medscape.com/medline/abstract/26001522

Although I am very reluctant to ruin what this yeast does on its own by using too many hops, I'm starting to wonder if it might be nice with a bunch of citra - only @flameout/dry hop.

But again I'm reluctant. I know how much aroma the New Nordic beer had when I bottled it, it made my entire basement smell wonderful. And right now my basement has many of the same aromas from the kicked up fermentation just like that beer did at this point.

[mashani]

Bottled the "New Nordic Tart Cherry Dubbel".

This fermented mostly between 72-74.

When the krausen fell, it fell in big 2-3" wide, 1/2" tall chunks all at once that held together on the way down, leaving big "yeast icebergs" (IE a lot thicker then normal yeast islands), and then eventually the yeast "iceburgs" sank too, except for one that refused to go down, so I just bottled with it there. If happily floated on top the whole time. It was fun. It did leave nice clear beer.

May as well call it fruit salad dubbel. I've been drinking the hydro sample. It is like drinking pears, apples, and apricots or something like that, with some berries, thin slices of banana, and some spices and marzipan (that comes from the cherry pits in the candi syrup, it's very mild, but it's there).

This yeast blend doesn't need fruity hops to make fruity beer at least not at warmer temps. FWIW, this tastes much better then a hop like El Dorado's crack version of fruit.

It would be interesting to know what it does at 50-60, but that's not going to happen unless I can revive some jarred stuff in the late fall.

That said it is delicious, it will be more so with a good bit of carbonation to give it some bite.

It is on the very low end of Dubbel color, maybe a bit too low, but style guidelines and Belgians don't really mix accurately anyways.

It's also about 7.5% ABV. Apparently the attenuation of the previous batch wasn't out of line for what this stuff can do at least at warm temps. That batch finished lower, but it had a half pound more sugar, and it works out just about the same if I was to tweak this recipe that way.

If I was mixing this with flavorful hops, I think I'd drift more towards the spicy or piney kind more then fruity, although I'm still intrigued by the idea of trying it with some citra, although that might just be too much LOL.

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[mashani]

So I basically brewed a batch of "Single Karmelite" (IE Patersbier but with similar reduced grain bill as the real thing) using half of the stuff I described on the "what are you brewing" thread.

So for this 5.5 gallon batch that would amount to a PM of

1.5# Pilsner (bumped up because of how much my OG was, I figure I must have used 3# instead of 2#).
0.5# Malted Oats
0.5# Malted Wheat
1/3# Flaked Barley
1/3# Flaked Oats
1/3# Flaked Wheat

This had enough bittering already boiled into it to give me 10 IBUs.

So to that I added:

3# MoreBeer Pilsner LME
1.5# MoreBeer Extra Light LME
4oz Dextrose

45 minute boil.

1/2oz Styrian Goldings (6%) @45
1/2oz Styrian Goldings (6%) @15
1/2oz Coriander Seed @2
1/4oz Grains of Paradise @2

New Nordic Yeast

OG was 1.047

The coriander belongs in this, the GOP not really, but I wanted a bit more spice in this then I'm getting from the yeast, to balance out the fruit, which is why I added the GOP, I think it will be super nice lawnmower beer. Normally you would use a yeast like Ardennes or similar in this beer, which has more spicy phenols then I got with the New Nordic yeast in the last batch.

[mashani]

So I have been drinking more of the first New Nordic beer (with the juniper).

So one thing I can tell you is if you look at my recipe or base some beer off of stuff read on Larsblog, and brew it, then for sure carb it lightly and serve it warmish.

It is so much better 50ish degrees and with some of the carb blown off then it is cold and more carbonated. And I carbed it lightly to begin with, but even less is better. Traditionally such beers would be just served flat or just with whatever residual carb came out of the fermenter, and I now believe that's probably really the right way to do it.

I'm just taking them out of the fridge, pouring them, and leaving them sit for a hour. So much better that way, all the flavors and aromas come out. And it has a lot of both. I'm talking IPA like levels, except it's totally not an IPA in any sense of the word, the flavors/aromas are totally different.

This stuff is delicious, but so very different then any beer I've ever made that it's hard to describe. Crap loads of pears/apples/berry/orange like fruit with some banana and some spice and pine behind it, but nothing like hop driven fruit.

In some ways it's more like a mead then a beer, except less fussy to brew,

I can see why Vikings liked stuff like this.

[mashani]

So for the last beer I was feeling lazy and I decided that I wanted to keep it super simple and keep it a short boil SMaSH. All my other recipies were more complicated, had more stuff in them besides the yeast and hops developing flavors, I wanted to just keep this very simple. Also my ambient temps are a bit lower so it's easier for me to keep things cool for the next few days, so I decided to try pitching this yeast very cool so it gets going at the very low end of its range and ramps up the whole time to try to bring out more of the full flavor (IE more spice maybe and less esters maybe). Also I'm pitching at a higher pitch rate because of this, which should also change up the mix towards the more spice side of things. Maybe.

The easiest way for me to pitch as cool as I wanted (56-58F or so) was for me to do one of my lazy high concentrated wort short boils and top off with a crap load of near 32 degree ice water (ice crystals just starting to form in the jugs). Using my wort chiller wouldn't get me anywhere near that cool this time of year, and would likely give me a Brett infection.

So I basically boiled 4# of Pils LME in just under 1/2 gallon of water, with 1oz of Southern Promise hops for a total boil duration of 10 minutes (11.7% AA), did a 20 minute lid on hopstand to get more IBUs without darking/carmalizing the wort any more and preserve the flavor/aroma and let it cool down a bit (and keep my brett out / give it more pasteurization time), poured a gallon and a half of ice water into my fermenter and literally just dumped the pot right into it, topped up with more ice water to 3 gallons. My temp was right at 57 degrees. I did fancy thermal math right once and figured out how to pull off this method, I described it for a 5 gallon batch once in another thread, but it's a lot easier for 3 gallons.

It will eventually rise into the 70s, but it won't get there for some days with me using ice blocks at first, and will give whatever strain of yeast in this blend that works better at lager temps (at least one of them does) a good head start.

That was a complicated description for a very simple to make beer, but I pretty much know what to expect from this as I've done the same thing with 1oz of 11.5% AA Aramis hops and Lallamand Abbaye yeast and I liked that beer very much. The Southern Promise hops sound a lot like Aramis from their profile, IE good spicy earthy with slight citrus European lager type of hop, but with high AA, which makes them work in a short boil like this.

It will still turn out very pale because the boil is so short that the concentrated wort doesn't darken much.

Anybody who can make Mr. Beer or Brew Demon recipes can make something like this. It's that easy.

So that's what I did, we shall see how well this yeast and hop work in that kind of beer. (I know of sure that this beer with Aramis and Abbaye I could drink all the time, it's quite good that way).

OG was 1.047, which is perfect. I know from experience, perceived IBUs will be like you did it around 20somethingish (hard to say exactly due to concentrated wort, but I know from experience it's not as low as brewing software thinks it might be - formulas simply don't work when you do this and organic chemistry isn't linear and gets all wonky when you do wonky things, which is why simple formulas don't work) but anything in the 20-30 range is just fine in a beer like this. I know it works with 11% hops just fine from experience.

Yeah, I'm mostly German/Viking, but I didn't inherit the bug up my butt precision gene LOL.

[mashani]

This yeast laughs at low temperatures and ferments fast anyways. I've had to add a lot of ice to keep it cool.

[mashani]

So I drank a bottle of that "Single Karmelite", it's been 3 weeks + 2 days since I pitched the yeast on that batch, been in the bottle less then 2 weeks.

This is quite good. It doesn't need any more aging, it's in my rotation officially. If you like wit beer at all you would like it a lot. It tastes like a good wit beer but with a bit of pears added. It is clearer then wit beer though, this yeast blend flocks out more.

It's not all "fruity like a fruit ipa on crack but less bitter" like the higher OG "New Nordic Ale" (gruit) is. It's much more familiar as "beer".

The dubbel is somewhere in between, it's more fruity then this, but still familiar as beer and good as a dubbel. I taste the banana a bit more in the dubbel.

I'll try to take a photo of both this and the dubbel side by side tomorrow, they are both good beers. Dubbel will probably improve with more age, but this doesn't need it.

I'll be bottling the other patersbier I made with this soon, its done, I've just not gotten around to it.

[Inkleg]

I'm enjoying reading the updates on the different beers keep um coming.

[mashani]

So I gave away some of the New Nordic beer and also the "Single Karmelite", and a bunch of people tried it.

Feedback was that everyone liked the New Nordic beer but they had no words to describe it as to compare it with anything they ever had before, just that it was fruity and tart and spicy and intense in a way that they wouldn't have thought possible. If anything maybe too intense. Which matches my perceptions too, I'd want to tone it down a notch somehow next time. I think just reducing the gravity would do it based on the other stuff I've made.

Everyone however seems to have seriously loved the "Single Karmelite". The common feedback was "It is like Blue Moon but better and more complex". Folks noted the tartness, the bit of pears and other fruit, some Saison like spices. They all want me to give them more of it. So that beer I will call a total success and wouldn't change a thing. FWIW, I like it a lot too.

I'm going to pass out some of the dubbel to them and see what they think of that, I just thought it needed more age when I was giving beers away. It's flavors are more intense, but not as crazy as the New Nordic beer.

I threw a 2 week old bottle of the straight up Patersbier I made with this yeast in the fridge, and will try some tonight. If it is as I expect, based on my hydro sample, then I will say that I like this New Nordic yeast better (at least at warm temperatures) in lower ABV 1.05 or < beers, as it makes a good amount of flavor but not crazy amounts.

I'll have to try some over the winter and see if that changes at lower temperatures, IE maybe a higher gravity beer work better.