thecebruery
Active Member
So I'll be brewing a 1.069 Belgian Dubbel soon with the new Safbrew Abbaye yeast this week. This thread has a nice collection of peoples' results and opinions, but a few things seem to be common to all (or at least, most): a) it's a sulfur bomb but that it cleans itself up in time; b) it attenuates like a beast (83% - 93%); and most importantly to me, c) it's pretty mild, or that it tends towards the phenolic rather than the estery, though it does seem most people in that thread fermented on the cooler side of things (I see a lot of 62F - 65F fermentation temps).
My goal is a balanced Dubbel with a lot of yeast character. The recipe I'm using is about 70% pilsner, 10% caramel aromatic (20L), 10% munich, 8% amber candi sugar, 2% Special B, and a hint of chocolate thrown in to the mash late for color. I'll mash at 154F.
Before anyone says it, I'm in the Philippines, so running down to my LHBS for a vial of WP500 is out of the question. And yes, I've even tried propagating from bottles of Chimay Red - by the time they make them over here, the bottles are a year or two old and the yeast are dead dead dead. So short of paying $150 to FedEx in a vial on ice (which I'm not prepared to do - yet), this 500g brick of Abbaye will have to do me.
With the production date on my brick of last March, Mr. Malty estimates 68% viability, and suggests 176 grams of dried yeast for 1.6 barrels of 1.069 wort.
I'm thinking I'd like to gently stress this yeast to encourage it to produce esters. Though there are plenty of threads that talk about it in general terms, my question to y'all is about facts and figures.
1) When you underpitch to encourage ester formation, how much do you underpitch by? 25%? 50%? Safbrew's data sheet for Abbaye suggests 50 to 80 g/hL to pitch, and 1.6 barrels is 1.91 hL, or a range of 96g to 153g, perfectly in line with Mr. Malty's recommendation assuming 68% viability. Would hitting something about 100g (near the low end of the manufacturer's suggested range) be ok? 17 plato and 191000 mL of beer with a pitching rate of 0.75 million cells/mL/P is 168g ... but this article says Westmalle has a pitch rate of 0.25 million cells/mL/P and Duvel a pitch rate of 0.44 million cells/mL/P. Has anyone had success pitching at around 0.25 million cells/mL/P (which would be only 56g of 68% vitality yeast)?
2) When you ferment high to encourage ester formation, at what temperature do you pitch, and how fast do you let it rise to what temperature? Safbrew's data sheet for Abbaye gives a temperature range of 12-25°C, or 53.6-77°F, and an ideal range of 15-20°C, or 59-68°F. I have deep thermowells and a homemade glycol chiller of several HP that can knock temperature off no problem, so I'm not going to overshoot anything. The same article mentions Duvel and Westy both pitching low (~64F) but then letting them free rise up to as high as 84F over the course of five days. Has anyone had success letting their Belgians rise this high? What fermentation schedule did you follow? Did you do this in lieu of or in conjunction with underpitching?
3) When you aerate less to encourage ester formation, at which flow rate do you add oxygen/air to your chilled wort, and for how long? Normally, I aerate at around 3 L/min - should I cut this in half? By 75%?
I know this is a tricky question - this yeast is very new, and every yeast behaves differently - but I'm hoping that the collective wisdom of this board will help generate some guidelines about numbers to never go beyond, or good starting points.
My goal is a balanced Dubbel with a lot of yeast character. The recipe I'm using is about 70% pilsner, 10% caramel aromatic (20L), 10% munich, 8% amber candi sugar, 2% Special B, and a hint of chocolate thrown in to the mash late for color. I'll mash at 154F.
Before anyone says it, I'm in the Philippines, so running down to my LHBS for a vial of WP500 is out of the question. And yes, I've even tried propagating from bottles of Chimay Red - by the time they make them over here, the bottles are a year or two old and the yeast are dead dead dead. So short of paying $150 to FedEx in a vial on ice (which I'm not prepared to do - yet), this 500g brick of Abbaye will have to do me.
With the production date on my brick of last March, Mr. Malty estimates 68% viability, and suggests 176 grams of dried yeast for 1.6 barrels of 1.069 wort.
I'm thinking I'd like to gently stress this yeast to encourage it to produce esters. Though there are plenty of threads that talk about it in general terms, my question to y'all is about facts and figures.
1) When you underpitch to encourage ester formation, how much do you underpitch by? 25%? 50%? Safbrew's data sheet for Abbaye suggests 50 to 80 g/hL to pitch, and 1.6 barrels is 1.91 hL, or a range of 96g to 153g, perfectly in line with Mr. Malty's recommendation assuming 68% viability. Would hitting something about 100g (near the low end of the manufacturer's suggested range) be ok? 17 plato and 191000 mL of beer with a pitching rate of 0.75 million cells/mL/P is 168g ... but this article says Westmalle has a pitch rate of 0.25 million cells/mL/P and Duvel a pitch rate of 0.44 million cells/mL/P. Has anyone had success pitching at around 0.25 million cells/mL/P (which would be only 56g of 68% vitality yeast)?
2) When you ferment high to encourage ester formation, at what temperature do you pitch, and how fast do you let it rise to what temperature? Safbrew's data sheet for Abbaye gives a temperature range of 12-25°C, or 53.6-77°F, and an ideal range of 15-20°C, or 59-68°F. I have deep thermowells and a homemade glycol chiller of several HP that can knock temperature off no problem, so I'm not going to overshoot anything. The same article mentions Duvel and Westy both pitching low (~64F) but then letting them free rise up to as high as 84F over the course of five days. Has anyone had success letting their Belgians rise this high? What fermentation schedule did you follow? Did you do this in lieu of or in conjunction with underpitching?
3) When you aerate less to encourage ester formation, at which flow rate do you add oxygen/air to your chilled wort, and for how long? Normally, I aerate at around 3 L/min - should I cut this in half? By 75%?
I know this is a tricky question - this yeast is very new, and every yeast behaves differently - but I'm hoping that the collective wisdom of this board will help generate some guidelines about numbers to never go beyond, or good starting points.