White Labs Yeast – 550 Belgian Ale White Labs

Used two vials to make a 2L starter for a 6 gallon batch of Trippel at 1.070. It took off within 10 hours and blew the lid off the fer-mentor! Make sure you use a blow-off tube and keep an eye on it for the first two days. I would recommend pitching at a low temperature as the yeast quickly gets out of control and rises in temperature if you’re not careful. After two days of extreme activity things slowed to almost nothing and it has taken another two weeks to hit min attenuation – one more week should just about do it in the primary.

An interesting characteristic of this yeast is that it doesn’t like to drop in temperature even by a degree – whatever your max temp is it really needs to stay there for the duration. Drop by a couple of degrees and it seems to go to sleep. Belgian breweries will let this stuff rise to 29oC but I doubt id risk this at home as it could easily get out of control. Initially a lot of banana flavors were present but these have really decreased over the two weeks so i’m hoping for a reasonably well balanced beer after racking in the secondary and leaving for a month or so. An interesting yeast so far that has required some attention (and cleaning of floors!).

The attenuation was great. 1081 finished at 1012 and a 1055 finished at 1006. The recipes both contained 15-20% sugar. The nose was on the fruity side as the fermentation temps were warm – pitched at 74F. The taste was much more spicy than fruity and really delivered a Belgian taste. The yeast flocculated more than I was hoping for, providing a nice clear beer.