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| From left to right, k1-V1116, GRE, and BM45 Brunello |
Wine Yeast Saison Experiment
This was one of those experiments that at best would have achieved a moderately interesting outcome, had quite a few significant risks and uncertainties to overcome in order to achieve that moderately interesting outcome, and in the end surpassed all expectations, resulting in the creation of several surprising and delicious beers. The idea of using a wine yeast in a saison came from a Brewing Network Interview with Shea Comfort where he discussed using wine yeasts and oak aging. This is probably one of the most informative and thought provoking interviews I have ever listened to on beer. The three main take away points from the interview are the following:
1. That wine yeast could produce very interesting flavors in beer (cherry, fruit salad).
2. Given that wine yeasts are primarily used to consuming the simple sugars of grape juice they will likely have difficulty attenuating a traditional wort,
3. Many strains of wine yeast produce enzymes that kill off other strains of saccharomyces.
So how does one achieve the flavor contribution of a wine yeast while still fully attenuating the beer? The following are either what Shea Comfort suggested or what I thought of:
1.Shea Comfort recommended using a enzyme to break down the wort into simpler sugars so that the wine yeast could ferment the beer out completely.
2. A second possible method would be to add the wine yeast for bottle conditioning since table sugar could probably be easily consumed and one wouldn't be relying on the wine yeast for attenuation of the beer.
3.A third potential method would be to take a saison with a grist of say 10% table sugar, and instead of adding the sugar to the boil, one would make a separate solution in a growler and add the wine yeast. One would then ferment the rest of the beer with a normal beer yeast and then at bottling combine the sugar wash fermented with wine yeast with the regularly fermented beer.
4. A fourth way would be to primarily ferment with a "susceptible" wine strain which doesn't produce killer enzymes and then ferment the rest of the beer out with a regular beer strain. Shea had only mentioned one strain which was susceptible but it was a champagne yeast strain known for being very neutral.
5. A fifth way way would be to primarily ferment with a wine strain then ferment the rest of the beer out with Brettanomyces or bacterial culture. I didn't know at the time that Brettanomyces were unaffected by the killer enzymes.
For the experiment I chose to try my luck at bottle conditioning with the wine yeast since I could taste multiple wine strains by splitting one 5 gallon batch several ways at bottling, and at the same time see how much contribution a wine yeast strain would give at the most minimal level of involvement. The risks of such an experiment was I had no idea how well wine yeast would carbonate a beer. One would expect that any sacch yeast would produce alcohol and CO2 when fermenting, but at the same time carbonation isn't a concern of wine makers. Another concern was that despite attempts to remove the primary beer yeast before adding the wine yeast for conditioning, I still could have ended up with a battle royal and off flavors as a result of all the carnage in the bottle. A final concern was that even if it did fully carbonate and there were no off flavors, bottle conditioning could have too minimal a growth phase to provide any meaningful flavor contributions from the wine yeast.
Recipe and Process
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| Me in Allagash's Barrel Room. Was there a week before they unleashed their first coolship series beers. |
90% Continental Pils
10% Malted Wheat
Mashed in @ 149.4 F for 60 Min.
60 Minute Boil
.625oz 7.2%aa Amarillo @ 60min
.5oz 5.6%aa Glacier @ 60min
.5oz 2.3%aa Strisselspalt @ 10min
.5oz 2.3%aa Strisselspalt @ 02min
OG:1.055
FG: 1.000
I fermented the beer at DC summer basement tempts (78-82 F), left the beer in primary for several weeks then transferred to secondary trying to leave as much yeast as trub as possible. I had intended to use gelatin in the secondary in order to get as much yeast out as possible but ended up losing the gelatin packet so I went without. Bottled: July 21st, 2011. At bottling I primed the entire batch for 2.75 vol. CO2 in one bucket. the beer was divided into 3 equal parts by racking a 3rd at a time into a separate bucket where the rehydrated wine yeast was added for bottle conditioning. Its not in my notes but I used the standard amount of dry yeast used when bottle conditioning a beer that doesn't have enough yeast in suspension. The Wine Yeasts I used were K1-V1116, GRE, and BM45-Brunello.
Tasting Notes
All of them had a moderate to low amount of saison yeast character, some definite vinous qualities, a citric flavor that didn't seem to be hop derived, and moderate amount of bitterness. Mouthfeel was what one would expect out of a saison, moderate to high carbonation, all of them finished very dry. The K the differences between the three are broke down as follows:
K1-V1116
Vinous/ chardonnay type flavors pear, peach, red berry notes, slight strawberry. Possibly slight diacetyl which I think actually rounds out the sharper flavors out quite nicely.
GRE
Has a slightly brighter more intense and shorter lived chardonnay/ berry flavor with no diacetyl or peachish flavors surrounding it.
BM45- Brunette
Has similar flavors to the gre except without as much berry and a slight silkily/ chalky/ creamy flavor that could be describe as an emptiness of flavor compared to the other two.
The following are my notes on how Shea Comfort described the flavors each yeast would contribute which I pulled up after taking the notes above.
"k1v1116 –white wine –very stone fruit peach quality –used as part of a wheat beer.
gre –red wine –fresh berry which is really really cool –sort of quoting his words
bm45 –red wine yeast – definitely nice beautiful cherry a lot of mouthfeel characteristics –known for tremendous mouthfeel"
In retrospect many of Shea Comfort's tasting notes, with the exception of the BM45, which didn't give off any cherry like flavors, matched my experience. I didn't sense any mouthfeel difference between the yeasts. What was also very interesting is that K1-V1116 a white wine strain, changed the color of the beer so dramatically.
Moving Forward
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| Don't have any good pictures so this is from a recent Ghostland Concert |
I'm really excited to dive further into using yeasts traditional used in wine-making for the production of beer. The difference in flavor and color I experienced just from bottle conditioning, which most brewers seem to think of as an after thought (often using champagne or lager yeast in order to guarantee consistent carbonation with a "neutral flavor"), was very surprising. Yes, all of these beers were very similar, but that 7-10% of flavor fluctuation that occurred between these beers (not even addressing color) is enough of a difference in my opinion, to change up my entire brewing process. My next steps will be to use the same wine yeasts I used in the above experiments only using the separate sugar wash fermentation and finishing out with Brettanomyces in order to get a bench mark for what contributions will result using these methods compared to strictly bottle conditioning. Once I feel I've found the most expressive method I will start working through the other 30 or so commercially available dry wine yeasts, many of whose descriptions are far more interesting than those I conducted this experiment with.
