I’ve been brewed with Hornindal, Hothead, Voss (Omega), and Oslo over the past two years. I don’t love Voss, but Hornindal has worked great for me. Oslo has been fine.
Great Beers
Hibiscus ginger farmhouse (Hornindal at 75 & 95F, both great. Yeast character a bit more subdued at 75F.)
Various IPAs (75F-95F)
Blonde Ale (Oslo @ 75F)
Terrible beers
IPAs where I’ve dry hopped too early (Fast fermentation scrubbed hop aroma.)(
Blonde (Oslo @ 67F)
My last batch was split with Omega 114 Bayern Lager and Bootleg Oslo, and the difference is very drastic. The Oslo beer is a nice little blonde ale, and the Bayern lager beer is distinctly a lager. Anyone know of a commercial brewery that distributes a kveik lager to Central IL?
Kveik is good for:
Farmhouse ales if you can keep temps high and don’t like some Belgian strains
Hoppy beers if you can’t keep temps under 80
Lighter ales if you can keep temps between 72-80
Kveik is not good for:
Traditional lagers
Making ales if you need to use a heater to get your beer above 72F
Just my opinions after a 15-20 batches with kveik. I think there’s a bit too much marketing in kveik, I don’t think it’s a magic bullet. Everyone has their preferences. The temp requirements for kveik are a bit onerous depending on what you’re going for.
Is anybody actually making this claim? I know a lot of brewers are mashing kveik into every style but that is less about any yeast lab pitching it as a magic bullet and more brewers trying to put something new to work and in the case of commercial breweries finding something new to sell for those who constantly have to drink something new. It’s like the year (2011? 2012?) when Belgian yeast went into everything. It came and went.
Kveik offers something new and interesting the brew with and might be a real help to people who don’t have cooler brewing spaces and don’t want to brew with highly expressive yeast. Once the fad aspect wears off it will settle in to being a tool for a relatively small number of beers and another fringe IPA style.
Escarpment and Bootleg claim “lager like” regardless of temperature. Quite a few Homebrewers say something like, “You can basically make a lager without any temp control.” And saying “lager like” isn’t the same as choosing you can make a lager with it is a lawyers response. You could make the better comparison of Cal ale but at any temperature, but that’s not nearly as enticing.
1.00 oz Amarillo (AA 8.6%, Pellet) 60 min, 22.7 IBU
1.00 oz Amarillo (AA 8.6%, Pellet) 15 min, 11.3 IBU
2.00 oz Amarillo (AA 8.6%, Pellet) 0 min, 0.0 IBU
Does that look okay ? Also got some Simcoe but don’t want to bitter too much.
Gonna tell my experiences with kveik so far, love the idea of now temp control, not for me but for some of my friend get into the homebrew scene, and made 2 beers with kveik, one gose, was fantastic one the best beer for a hot day of summer, live on a country where the season are divided into rainy and hot and sunny and hot, the gose was fermented in the 88 F, now I did one dark saison, please belgian beer lovers don’t scorch me, I don’t like work with diatasticus, the beer is really unique there a lot of orange, in a good way, there a little spices and the malt give a good backbone, best of all 11 days grain to glass, fermentation in the temp of 82 F. Another thing I like about the kveik is the fast priming, in 1 week the beer are fulled carbonated, I know this is not a thing everyone care but for me is a plus.
Mad this recipe is a good one, the only thing I wouldn’t do is the amarillo, because I had bad experiences with, and depend on which kveik strain you gonna use the citric and orange gonna be overwhelming. Cheers good brewing
orange flavor comes through for me in alot of the kveik out there. I think alot of Kveik plays well with malt flavors as well. There seems to be a big focus on using kveik for hoppy beers, but the more I use it the more I feel it is better for malt focused beers.
I only make small batches 1-1.5 gallons. I have been keeping a brew with 04 or 05 which is taking 2 weeks and doing 1-2 Kveik brews at the same time. It takes half as long to finish which is cool during COVID when ive only drank what i’ve made since April. I made a “pilsner” with Kveik. It was quite clean and Lagerish to my palate. Enough that my more sophisticated buddy loved it and he is a European Lager guy. Expect no miracles and its great. I pitch at 90 and have it sit on a warmer that keeps it in the 80’s. No worries is nice. Not tried it pitching at 90 and letting it go without heat but plan to. Its another cool tool and a good one for a home brewer who does small batches. Lower pitch rate is cheap. Save the slurry and pitch a tsp for a batch and let it go. I used dry Voss and slurry from it for a few brews.
“Expect no miracles” that’s for sure. Its cool to get peoples opinions on kveik but i’m in the “i can’t stand kveik camp” one more brew using it and thats it, wanna see what happens when you keep it cooler like mid 70’s
Thank you for your comment. Can you elaborate on “depends on which strain” ?
It is Hornindal kveik.
Will rye spiciness mask some of that orange from Amarillo? Or would you recommend reducing later additions and upping bittering ?
With the strain hornidal you gonna get a lot of fruit, yellow fruit, some ppl say almost caramel, the spiciness would help, if I would brew this I would reducing to 1 oz the later addition only, but it me not you, if you like go for it my friend. Send feedback later of how it was.
Has anyone tried the Lutra? I’m about to start something that aims for about 6 gallons of 8% ABV… In his (richly detailed and beautifully illustrated) new book, and on his site, Lars Marius Garshol suggests pitching at a low rate. I am wondering if anyone has had success with the low-pitch rate approach or if anyone has any other ideas they can recommend.
I picked up some Lutra and was quite impressed. Rather clean and tasty. Not fruity like what I got from some of the other Kviek strains. I pitched a bit heavy and ran it at 85 degrees.