I’m thinking I’d like to make a Roggenbier on Labor Day to round out my Oktoberfest line up. I’m also thinking about using WY1007 German Ale yeast rather than the usual wheat beer yeast as I’m not a huge fan of banana/clove/bubblegum notes and its for a party. Haven’t used 1007 before. Any reason I should reconsider?
Have you tried WL Hefe IV in the lower 60’s? How about some the the other german wheat yeasts? They don’t all throw off banana like WY3068 does.
It’s not going to taste anything like a roggenbier if you don’t use a hefeweizen type yeast. Might be a tasty beer though. You might consider upping the hops (and adding some flavor/aroma hops) a bit to make the beer a bit more interesting.
I did just this. I use WLP380 for all my German wheat brews. I don’t like banana and bubblegum.
What about using White labs American HEfe WLP320? This strain has muted hefe flavors and I would imagine that you could control that with temp to make it even more subtle. I used it in an American Hefe and the hefe flavors were subtle.
This is track I started down. I’ve modified the recipe and added more Tettnang to get the IBUs up to ~22 and boosted the Saaz at the end to bolster some aroma. So you think fermenting around 58-60 df would give me a cleaner profile while keeping line with the style? That makes sense. Decisions, decisions, I love homebrewing.
Really? Thats interesting. What temp did you ferment at? I’ve found that the strain more close to 001 than a hefe yeast. But I fermented at 62.
Good question. It was about 4 years ago and I didnt use temp control then, but would write down the air temp of where it fermented on some batches. I would guess upper 60s/lower 70s. The hefe flavors were there, but very subtle. It was definitely not like a German hefe.
No. I don’t think it will be to style without the clove/bannana. It’ll be something else entirely. Maybe you should just brew an alt. 
I’m not as attached to being true to a style as I am using rye as the key character in the grain bill. Presently, I’m calling for 42%. Looks like something else entirely it is!
A roggenalt then! Sounds good to me.
I ended up pitching a healthy starter of wy1007 into ~5.75 gallons at 1.054 last night at about 10 PM. Got up this morning and it was bubbling away nicely in an 8 gallon bucket with a blowoff. Well, roundabout noon this thing turned into RoggenStein. I’ve never seen such a monstrous fermentation. It blew the lid off the bucket twice without even having a clogged BO tube, it just couldn’t keep up. I’ve been babysitting the thing all day burping every five minutes or so. It just now seems to be quieting down some. This is my first time using 1007, anyone have similar experiences with this strain?
If nothing else, I have a name for the beer :
It actually smells pretty promising.
1007 is a pretty good climber. It should not blow off the lid w/o clogging the tube, though.
Kai
Yeah, I think with a typical ‘brew bucket’ the lid would have been fine. The one I used doesn’t actually have a gasket and seems to be softer, thinner plastic. It’s the biggest one I have though and I ended up with almost 6 gallons. I’m not worried about infection as I’m very thorough with sanitation and the smells from the fermentation chamber and the blow off vessel were appealing.
does the lid snap on at all? with a blow-off hose or airlock there should not be enough pressure to lift the lid.
I wouldn’t be worried about infection either. I’m just curious as to what is happening.
Kai
Yeah the lid snaps on but not as tightly as my other two buckets. Like I said, this one was (is) a monster. So much gas and foam was being produced that the airlock body with a blowoff hose attached could not relieve it fast enough to prevent the lid from bulging and losing its seal. I would push the lid down and force the gas/foam out through the blowoff and I could feel the pressure pushing back against my hands. It was impressive.
Maybe the blowoff was too long? geez, it was 1/2 inch silicone