Allagash Clo

[fredman730]

A couple of days ago I brewed Allagash Brewing Co.’s Nowaday Blonde Ale clone from a recent BYO magazine article. The recipe specifies a fermentation temperature of 50° for a WLP400 yeast. I pitched an 800ml starter the next day around noon at 50°. Now approximately 30 hours after pitching I'm still not seeing CO2 bubbles or krausen. Seems like a really low temperature for that yeast … but maybe I just need to relax and enjoy a homebrew? Thoughts? Recommendations?

 

[yeastseeker]

50 is too low and 800ml was probably a small starter. Warm it up to 62 and it should get going

 

[fredman730]

Thanks! Yeah, bumping the temp up to 60-ish was my next step. I'll do that tomorrow around noon. BTW, I should have mentioned that this is a 2.5G batch so hopefully my starter was more or less appropriately sized.

 

[jdauria]

According to that BYO article., the beer is described as a Belgian blonde ale, fermented as a lager, so that the Belgian yeast esters are low. Therefore pitching at 50, your yeast cell count should have been higher. Punching in the estimated OG from recipe into Brewer's Friend yeast calculator, at a "lager rate" you would need about 179 billion cells at lager temps. Not knowing how old the yeast was or the gravity of your starter, I am guessing you were short. Also, is this 2.5 gallons in a 5-6 gallon bucket? If yes, because of the head space in the bucket, and the fact that bucket lids don't seal well, you probably would not see much airlock activity. Plus at cold temps, you are not going to get a big thick krausen.

I would bump it up as others said, to get it started, but then slowly lower back down afterwards...otherwise you are going to have more of a regular Belgian Blonde instead of what the commercial beer is.

 

[fredman730]

First, THANKS for the input!!! Much for me to consider when I go for the second attempt.

This yeast is fairly fresh having been packaged at the end of Nov 2020. Beersmith estimated a 500ml starter and I bumped it to 800ml at 1.036 which should have given me 1.56B yeasties but I didn't purposefully allow for lager rates. The fermenter is a 3G Fermonster and seals fairly well so don't think I had too much head space or CO2 escaping the ferm lock.

I bumped the temp up to 63° at 48 hours without activity and today I have good krausen and decent CO2 activity at roughly 72 hours after pitching. Pretty sure I'll get a good beer ... just not the clone I was attempting.

 

[couchsending]

I’d suggest this yeast for future attempts...

https://www.theyeastbay.com/belgiansaison/northeastern-abbey
Or just harvest some from some fresh bottles of White.