Wyeast 3864 (la fin du monde yeast )for Belgian Triple

[Banjo-guy]

I've read with great interest some the recent discussion about Belgian Triples. I had Unibrou's La Fin du Monde recently and fell in love with it. Wyeast offers the Unibroue yeast but it is limited release and is not available right now. I'm going to culture it from the bottle and try to brew this beer.
I'd appreciate any recipe and fermentation advice for this yeast and beer. The bottle says that it is brewed with spices and I assume they are using dried orange peel and coriander.
The beer is very well balanced with no one flavor jumping out at you. The 9 % abv is hardly noticeable. It's very smooth and easy drinking. I found a four pack today and am looking forward to breaking one open tonight to see if it's as good as I remember from my vacation!

Thanks guys. I often check in to the forum to read but haven't been posting.


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[mashani]

Something like 70% Pilsner, 10% Wheat, 20% Candi Sugar, nothing but Styrian Goldings as far as hops, and finish it with coriander and orange peel and you will be close. Maybe throw in a bit of Aromatic malt in place of some of the Pilsner since your not likely going to be doing a decoction. I'd say hops at 60 and 20 or there about. Depending on AAUs something like 1.5oz @60, and 1oz @20 if you were doing it as 5 gallons.

[Banjo-guy]

Thanks. That almost the recipe that I found on Beer smith's recipe archive for La Fin du Monde. The notes for that recipe says that the brewer nailed it. The only difference in my brew will be the yeast. The Beer smith recipe calls for honey at 5 minutes instead of Belgian Candy.
I've read that the 3864 is a very balanced yeast.
That's what I liked so much about la Fin. It seem to me that no one flavor jumped out at you. The coriander and peel were very slight. I'm just not sure what temperature to ferment to bring out that balance.

I'm going to try la Fin du Monde tonight. It will be interesting to see if was just the glow of being on vacation while eating and drinking on the Key West shore that made the beer taste so great to me.

[mashani]

I unfortunately can't give you a temperature schedule for that yeast as I've not used it. But I've made the basic recipe above with Westmalle yeast - 3787/WLP530 - and it's a solid grain bill for a Tripel. It's also a very balanced yeast which is why it's one of my favorites. Chimay strain for example isn't so balanced, at a certain temp your going to get a lot of a certain flavor, and it's easy to turn into a clovey spice bomb or a banana bomb or even a "dirt bomb" if your pitch rates and temps are off. You can manipulate temps to get the mix of flavors you want but the windows for success are much tighter. Where it's hard to make bad beer with Westmalle strain no matter what you do to it.

Your going to have to do a lot of stepping up - (or drink a lot of la fin!) to get a good pitch rate. My only suggestion there is to be super paranoid about your sanitation.

La Fin Du Monde is really the only Unibroue beer that I really think is great. One of their strong darks I tried was like "clove and banana beer cola" more then a strong dark. But I have not tried everything, so who knows there might be another great one in their line up.

[Dawg LB Steve]

The spices referred to may be grains of paradise, which was one ingredient shown to us when we toured Ommegang which are all Belgian based beers.

[Banjo-guy]

That's true it could be grains of paradise. I had the beer last night and couldn't really pick up any coriander or dried peel. Someone else might be able to find those flavors but I didn't.

I toured Ommegang two years ago. We had lunch outside in the Belgian Cafe. That was a fun day.

[mashani]

GOP tastes kind of like peppercorns mixed with a lemony citrus.

But coriander mixed with a peppery yeast can taste similar when used lightly (when used lightly you don't taste *coriander*, you just get some hints of citrus in the background... if you use too much it can get a soapy vibe).

So it can be difficult to identify the difference, and it might be best to use one with some kind of yeast and the other with another kind of yeast. Really.

Both would taste good, although with a peppery yeast the GOP might push the peppery too high.

I don't know if the yeast La Fin uses is peppery on it's own or not.

To my palette La Fin has more clove then pepper, although it does have some spicy/peppery thing going on too, and also apples/pears and the like. Which is why I've brewed the same grain bill with Westmalle yeast, as it can give you similar flavors, all of which turn out balanced, without any one overpowering the other.