Elevated temps for Belgian Ardennes Yeast -WY#3522

[MikeB]

Brewed a Tripel with this yeast. After two weeks at 68 oF, I'm trying to get the beer to attenuate a bit more by raising the temp. Right now its at 78 oF and I just wondered how high can I go with this yeast? Has anyone pushed this yeast past 80 oF? WYeast site has the range of 65-76 oF. The activity has picked up from 15 seconds/bubble at 68 oF to about 5 sec/bubble at 78 oF. I'm wondering if there is a temp with this yeast where I will do more harm than good.

[twoskis brewskis]

I have been playing with this yeast a lot lately and love it. I have pushed it up to 76 after 10 days on a HUGE trippel and had great att. with no off flavors. I kept it there for around 6 days and then slowly crashed it. This yeast has great floc and IMHO produces great belgian beers that require less conditioning time than the other belgian yeasts I have used regularly.

[DBear]

This yeast will get you to the single digits depending on the gravity and is a consistent performer. I just brewed a 1.065 blonde this weekend, pitched at 64F and will let it free rise to whatever - probably low to mid 70's.

twoskis brewskis,

when you "slowly" cold crash, what's your routine?

-Cheers

[MikeB]

This is our second pitch off of this yeast, so I have yet to taste the first beer (except for a hydrometer sample). I'm glad to hear that someone is having success with this strain.

I'm warming the beer with a heating pad, so the temps got up to 81.5 oF. I'm going to let this go for a couple more days and then start cooling it down. I checked the gravity with my refractometer and the morebeer refractometer spreadsheet (see below) and the beer was at 1.020 (11 Brix). It was at 1.024 two days ago, so I'm hopeful the yeast can get this beer down to 1.014 or so.

Thanks for the replies.

http://morebeer.com/learn_vids/vids_refract (OG of 20.1 Brix)

[twoskis brewskis]

I use a fridge and a fermwrap for my fermentations. For cold crashing I will just turn off the fermwrap and it will go down to my basement temp (62) in around 36 hours at that time I use a ranco to bring down the fridge temp to 45 over 36 hours. I like to go slow because I have heard crashing too fast can cause the yeast to kick out some off flavors.

[DBear]

Thanks twoskis brewskis

MikeB

Just a follow-up - I pitched the 3522 into 64F wort and let free-rise. At 36hrs ferment temp at 73F. I will hold it at 74F for the rest of the ferment, I'm not brave enough to let it go/heat up to the 80's

-Cheers

[twoskis brewskis]

No prob DBear. That yeast should get it down pretty low for you. Something I have been doing with this yeast is to blend it with the Lavlin 1122 wine yeast. The Session w/ Shea Comfort was my inspiration for this. I have found that these two work real well together and produce a slightly more complex profile when compared to the 3522 alone.

[krizwit]

I have used the yeast twice and love it(favorite non-saison belgian strain). I started off at 65 with both and then ramped up to 80. I used it for a belgian blond and a belgian golden strong. I used 15% sugar on one going from 1.060 to 1.006 and then used 20% sugar on the other and went from 1.072 to 1.006.