The One

It's official. After working with a handful of different yeasts since opening in the spring of 2009, I've finally found a strain that has that elusive mix of flavor and functionality. For the past few months now, the four year round "numbered" beers and a couple seasonals have been fermented with one that many beer geeks and brewers are familiar with - the Ardennes, or Chouffe yeast. It's awesome! Here's why:

- excellent attenuation, but like the French saison strain still leaves a pleasantly full body
- ferments quickly and dependably, with extra short lag phases
- has a huge temperature range, much lower than typical Belgian yeasts
- settles out fantastically
- low sulfur production
- forms a nice harvest-able layer mid-fermentation all the way through to terminal gravity being reached

To elaborate on these points and why they are important, a more detailed explanation:

The high attenuation level is obviously key in making refreshing, farmhouse-style beers. Dryness is a wonderful thing, making higher gravity beers like the Six and Seven still reasonable pint pours as they won't fill you up. Often beers that are well attenuated come across thin, but each yeast has a distinct mouthfeel and this one leaves the beers with a great balance between crisp and creamy.

Fast fermentations are welcome for reasons of increased capacity anywhere, but the short lag phases are especially important here because these beers are all made in open fermenters where every hour that the wort sits waiting for the yeast to get rolling, airborne bacterial contamination is a concern. This is also why the cooler temperatures are better, as most common beer contaminants thrive above 80 F, which is where our last strain needed to be to work properly. The wide temperature range of the Ardennes yeast is nice because it allows for relatively cool fermentations, so beers like the Five and Six or perhaps upcoming seasonals or one-offs, which I want to push in a biere de garde-like direction with more delicate yeast profiles, become easier to control, around 60 F. At the same time, I can produce the Four and Seven around 10 degrees warmer and get a solid but still not overpowering Belgian-esque profile.

Every strain previously used here was a poor flocculator, and too often, particularly in draft versions, the beers had much more yeast than I'd like. It contributes a harsher bitterness and clouds/distorts the finish as well. That's now a thing of the past here, and while most of the beers retain a protein haze from the use of certain malts or raw grains, they should never pour with excess yeast again. In addition to that, all former strains employed here were significant sulfur producers, and sometimes no matter what we tried the sulfur couldn't be completely stripped out. The new yeast, jokingly dubbed Mc Ill Ganome, produces some sulfur during fermentation and, like most strains, quickly dissipates without any unusual effort on the brewers end.

The best thing of all though, is the ability to crop this yeast right off the top. Typically the timing works out that I can simply scoop it off with a stainless steel pitcher and go from tank to tank. Otherwise if it needs to be stored for a bit I attach a vacuum pump to the yeast brink that has a 1/2" diameter stainless steel "wand" and suck the yeast off. It's pretty cool, and the electric pump works better than the reversed bike pump I rigged that would burn an entire day's worth of calories for either Gerritt or I to operate. This top cropped yeast is especially pure and healthy, and is the main reason for having the open fermenters in the first place. Took nearly three years to find the one, but it was certainly worth the work and wait.