LALBREW® VOSS KVEIK ALE YEAST

[balrog]

I used one bag of dry Voss yeast for one batch, as I put in the other yeasts. Would I avoid such a citrus flavor if I used half a bag or even less?

I cannot speak to how to use Voss to get clean ferment flavor-I was always after the orange, which for me was always more tangerine/dark orange.

 

[CascadesBrewer]

I used one bag of dry Voss yeast for one batch, as I put in the other yeasts. Would I avoid such a citrus flavor if I used half a bag or even less?

Personally, I have brewed the same recipe with pitching a very small amount of harvested Omega Voss and with pitching an entire pack of Lallemand Voss. I cannot say I could tell the difference in the yeast character. There was a longer lag time with the underpitched Omega Voss. Fermented around 85F, both had a pronounced sweet orange character. I am pretty sure that some of the studies by Escarpment Labs showed that pitch rate had minimal impact on yeast flavors.

Note, that I have not found any real info on the cell count in a pack of Lallemand Voss.

 

[Alan Reginato]

This is the first time I used Voss. I split a batch with BE-134. An IPA with Zeus, but no DH, just a good flameout addition.
At 35 C, ended up in 4 days. But no f***ing way it was done. I mean, you can force carb boil wort, if you want to. But just at bottling, after 3 weeks, it seems to be really finished.

Anyway, it smells like tangerine or orange peel. Nice. But it taste like a bitter tangerine or orange peel. I don't know if it's the best combination. Citrus and bitter. Maybe if I let it maturing a while. Usually I find out that beer need at least 2 months to be good.

Did you have such experience with Kveik in IPA?

 

[Miraculix]

I used one bag of dry Voss yeast for one batch, as I put in the other yeasts. Would I avoid such a citrus flavor if I used half a bag or even less?

No, you would get even more of it

 

[CascadesBrewer]

I am pretty sure that some of the studies by Escarpment Labs showed that pitch rate had minimal impact on yeast flavors.

I might be wrong. I looked closer at the study. I am not positive if this is the latest, but it is probably the one I was thinking about (from 2019):
https://escarpmentlabs.com/blogs/resources/the-impact-of-pitch-rate-on-kveik-ferments
It does say the following:

Based on this analysis, it looks like there is a trend for increased aroma intensity for some of the kveiks (Voss and Hornindal) as the pitch rate decreases. However, this is not true for Arset and Ebbegarden, where the trends are less clear. So this tells us that there is not a one-size-fits-all rule for kveik pitch rate and aroma production.

Factoring in fermentation rate, fermentation specs and aroma production, we think that 7 million cells / mL strikes a good balance between the low and high pitch rate, but that the sweet spot could be somewhere between the two. We have done collaboration brews with partner breweries at around the 3 million cell / mL rate with good results and minimal impact on fermentation kinetics.

If my maths are correct for 5.5 gallons of wort

• 7 mill cells / ml = 146B cells
• 3 mill cells / ml = 62B cells
• 1 mill cells / ml = 21B cells

Note, that I have not found any real info on the cell count in a pack of Lallemand Voss.

If I looked at the Lallemand site I would have seen "Viability ≥ 5 x 10^9 CFU per gram of dry yeast." A 11g pack should have 55B cells or more. If that 55B cell value is correct (some people claim that most dry yeast packs have much more yeast than the minimum), then one pack of Lallemand Voss seems to be a decent pitch rate based on the Escarpment Labs study.