Yeast choice for a wheat wine...?

Krid said:

I wanted to make something along the lines of an imperial belgian witbier. I know that normal gravity witbiers aren't supposed to be kept around, and I wasn't sure if that was a function of the yeast strain, or the high wheat content of the beer.

Maybe both?

Anyway, my first thought was fermenting with WLP400 and then finishing it of with WLP001 (shooting for an ABV of 10.6% or there abouts.) But if WLP400 isn't conducive to aging, my next choice was to just use WLP500 or WLP530 and just kind of echo a belgian wit with a sort of wheat intensive golden strong ale.

Any thoughts?

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Gus_13 said:

That is a very high gravity for a witbier. If you were wanting to do something like a wheat wine you could go with the high gravity yeast from white labs. If you wanted to stay close to Belgian, go with something like WLP530. It's an abbey ale yeast and should be able to give you good Belgian characteristics and handle the high gravity. Just throw in some orange peal and a bit of coriander to get those witbier flavors. be sure to keep the SRM down and you will have an imperial witbier on your hands. Belgians don't really brew to standards so whatever you come out with will work!

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highgravitybacon said:

You don't need high gravity yeast for anything less than at least 12%.

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