Beer Forum

White Labs WLP 530 -- holy cow! Pitched a 2L starter(2 vials) into a 1.084 OG batch of Tripel last night at midnight. By 11:00 am it had push thru the top of the carboy (blow-off hose not in place yet). Now foam chugging out of blow-off hose and with cold water, fan and wet t-shirt I can only hold a 4 deg F diff, from ambient in my basement (ususally can pull up to 8 degrees). This yeast is nuts. Hopefully not too bad on the fusels with primary running at 67-69 F. Now searching craigs list for another fridge (do regular fridge's get cold enough to lager?

I think you'll be fine at 68-69 deg. Most of the Trappist/Belgian yeasts do fine at warmer temperatures. I fermented a Belgian Dark Strong once that hit 82 with no fusels. I talked to a brewer from Big Sky once about it and he said that higher alcohols are mainly created if it gets too hot in the first 36-48 hours of fermentation. After that it is not as important. Letting it rise to the 75-80 degree range will promote more fruity esters, which depending on what you are going for may be a good or bad thing.

Right on..JZ's book recommends 64 F pitch and rise to 70 over a few days. I had no chance to hold it at 64F...it took off like wildfire. In any case now I have made the case in my house for another fridge.

WLP530 tends to be a lower ester producing yeast strain, so you should be fine up into the 70s.
That one definitely does try to escape.. When it's crawling out of the carboy there's not a lot you can do. Be careful about cold crashing this strain though, as a quick temperature shift down will cause this one to flocculate out and become inactive. Stan Hieronymous writes about this in Brew like a Monk (I believe it was a Chris White quote). Cheers!


-Nathan

TimmyR wrote:Now searching craigs list for another fridge (do regular fridge's get cold enough to lager?

I'm holding my fridge at 35°F right now on my Ranco. How cold do you want it?

With most of the commonly used Beligian strains (WLP500, 530, and 550), you can ferment just fine in the low 70s and let things rip to 80 towards the end of fermentation. And yeah, those Belgian yeasts can be almost hyperactive. I did a quad a few months back that went from 1.096 to 1.012 in 5 days with WLP500! As long as you keep things in the low 70s for the first few days to a week, you shouldn't have issues with fusels.

I open ferment 530 for that reason. I got tired of mopping up, so I got a big 10 gallon bucket and let it go in there for the first week or so. Harvesting yeast is easy too I just scoop up some krausen into a sanitized jar.

My fermentation fridge is 20+ years old and only recently stopped being able to hold 34f. Now I use my chest freezer for lagering and the fridge for fermenting (50-70). A newer one should hold lower temps just fine.

Sweet, thnx all. Just got back from vacation and tasted the Tripel as I kegged it at S.G. 1.012....pretty strong yeasty character....hoping that will dissipate. The beer only sat on it for 2-weeks and 3-days.

Still looking for a fridge...now planning on switching my old chest freezer to my fermentation control and moving my kegs to a new fridge.

Go Cubs!