advice on belgium yeast

[redmire fc]

OK... asked my girlfriend/partner/woman (what do you say nowadays?) to pick up some ingredients for me from hop & grape whilst she was in darlo.....I wanted to do a Belgiumish beer..... 7.5kg marris....1kg munich....500g special B....250g aromatic (they substituted for cara munich)....500g dark candi sugar....( my girlfriend reading this says call me 'me bitch'....she didnt think Id write this)....thing is I asked for wlp 575/500/565/570.....or a similar product.....well she came back with the WLP400 belgian wit yeast? I wanted a leffe type beer....is it best to use a london ale WLP013 yeast I have and get a drinkable beer and leave the wit yeast for a proper wit.......I think the wit is more acidic and tangy, refreshing....not leffe like a all??? what do you think?

[Burner]

The Belgian style is all about the funky yeast so using an appropriate belgian one would be advisable. You could get a bottle of Westmalle or Chimay or one of the others, not leffe sadly, and grow up the yeast from that?

[Whorst]

I'd use the WLP-500, which is the Chimay Yeast. I've got a very good recipe for a dubbel, which uses lliquid Belgian Candy syrup. It will take 3 months in the keg/bottle before the flavors really come together. I'd imagine that in another 3-6 months you'd really have something.

[oblivious]

What about trying a sasion with the Wit yeast, some people use it for that style, not exactly right but it will give the phenols that your looking for

That or possibly a triple

[TC2642]

The WLP530 (Westmalle) is also very good. The key with Belgians is to start the fermentation temp at around 18oC and then gradually raise it over the period of the ferment, I have gone upto 26oC with good results.

[mysterio]

I would definately go ahead and use the Wit yeast, dont use the London yeast it will get you nowhere near.

I bet you could make a very good, authentic tasting belgian blonde/dark ale with it. It's a very spicy tasting yeast, and you can coax some banana out of it if you ferment it warm (pitch the yeast at 18 - 19C) and ramp it up to 23 - 25C over the course of a couple of days. If you dont warm it up, the yeast has a tendency to taste fairly neutral. It also has a tendency to flocculate on top of the beer before it's finished fermenting, so give the fermenter a gentle rock every two days to get the yeast working again.

I used to think making good Belgian wits were about spicing but i've had much closer results to hoegaarden/st bernardus just by manipulating the temperature of the yeast.

[redmire fc]

Thanks guys......didnt want wit, spicy, tart etc.......just wanted phenols, banana, clove, yeasty leffe type......have decided to go radical and do a 50/50 london and wit! she's on the stirrer....will do a proper leffe and a proper wit soon, if I end up with the right ingredients ..good brewing!

[mysterio]

If you ask me, the wit yeast isn't particularly tart. Spicy, phenolic, estery yes, and banana if you ferment warm. The london yeast is more dark fruit.

[steve_flack]

250g aromatic (they substituted for cara munich)

I'm not entirely sure that's the substitution I would have made for caramunich. Personally I would replaced it with normal crystal malt. They are not quite the same but pretty close. Despite the name caramunich is not made from munich malt.

Aromatic is like a super-Munich malt. It adds a strong malt flavour and aroma. It is very common in Belgian recipes but IMO shouldn't be much more than 5% of the grist.

As for yeast, almost any of the Belgian yeast will do a good job although WLP-550/WY-3522 is probably the easiest to use. Some of the others aren't particularly flocculant or can get stuck rather too easily (WLP-530 is prone to this if it gets too cold).