Beer Forum

How tough is it to clean a commercial fermenter to rid the system of a belgium yeast? Traveling to Lake Tahoe before Thanksgiving (pray for snow), my family and I stopped at the Lake Tahoe Brewery, and it appears that their IPA and Porter have a strong belgium flavor. The Brewery also makes a Wit, so I am wondering if the yeasts have been contaminated.
Is there that much risk having a belgium style beer on the menu, or is this just poor maintenance?
-Greg

In a commercial setting it is poor maintenance
The CIP equipment and raunchy ass cleaners available to them allow for little to no excuse for cross contamination.
BUB

One of the big problems with using multiple strains of yeast in a commercial brewery is that if you ain't running your process dead on, you'll get cross contamination.

There's nothing really special about a Belgian yeast that makes it any harder to kill, it's just that the flavor profile is so noticeable.

Also, it could be something completely different like a bug that's crawled into the brewery someplace.

Please don't associate SOUR with Belgian flavor. Lake Tahoe Brewing taste like they have never cleaned anthything...EVER!!! Its such a shame to they have a cool place in a cool location. If I won the lottery that is what I would buy.

Brad

Its probably caused by all of the above since I understand that they have a hard time making enough beer to support the business (although they can catch-up when there is no snow). Perhaps some attention to detail is needed, but when they need to brew batch after batch, this is hard (in their minds?). Too bad since it is a great location (although small).
I am a neophyte when it comes to Belgium beers so I might be confusing the flavors, but I found the same thing at Lodi Brewing when I tasted their IPA (last summer), and when I questioned the "Bartender", his response was that a Belgium yeast was used by mistake (poor quality control). They still listed this as a West Coast IPA.
-Greg

Otterbrew wrote:Belgium beers

Belgian beer, not Belgium beer. That's like talking about United States beers instead of American beers. (It also really pisses off the Belgians. Quite amusing)

And you know, it really doesn't matter if they've got to cram a lot of brewing in, you still need to do everything properly. It doesn't take that much time to get it right. As a another brewer once told me.. "Brewing is a solid 2 hours worth of work crammed into 8 hours."

we were up there in July. Good food. Perfect place but yeah. the beer was just ok. The actual brewery is not that big. You would think it would be less work to keep things clean. Perhaps the hoses they use need to be changed out. they looked like they have been arround for a while.