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You are here: Home --> Forum Home --> Brewing Forum --> Brewing Discussion --> Apparently, ECY29 (Conan) can be used as a pseudo-lager yeast?

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homebrewdad
Charter Member
Birmingham, AL
2480 Posts


I brewed my Conan IPA this past Sunday, ten moved it to my fermentation chamber in the basement.

Well, yay for an Alabama cold snap - my basement is currently cold as heck.  On top of that, I had not defrosted the freezer section of the ferm chamber (I'd been using it to lager in prior to this brew), so my beer got quite cold rather quickly. 

I had targeted 18.9 C/66 F as my fermentation temperature.  I checked on it Monday night, and the beer was at 10.6 C/51 F.  Ruh-roh. 

Last night, it was still only 12.4 C/54 F, so I opened the chamber and hooked up a space heater to my STC-1000's heat outlet.  Lo and behold, I had an inch of krausen and visible (if slow) fermentation activity. 

Now, I did get the temp up where I wanted it last night, and this morning, it was going steady there without the help of the heater (yay exothermic reactions).

Still, it got me to thinking that, if nothing else, this yeast is certainly more cold tolerant than the posted range for it.  So I wonder, how versatile is this yeast, really?  I wonder if it really can act as a pseudo lager yeast?  I imagine ester production would be pretty reserved at those cold temps, and this strain is not noted for being phenolic... it should be pretty clean, no?

Yeah, I know - why use a yeast like this, only to make it clean?  I just thought this was pretty interesting.




Posted 34 days ago.

rayfound
Charter Member
Riverside, CA
313 Posts


Almost all yeast will get active much lower than stated ranges, just not as active as they would have been, and they are more likely to flocculate and fall out before reaching complete attenuation. I, for one, am not at all shocked it was active at 50-55F 3 days in. 



Posted 34 days ago.

Necropaw
Charter Member
Central WI
608 Posts


As a WI brewer, i agree.  Ive fermented some ales at appalling temperatures just because they were in the basement.

Also Olan, i have a feeling if i asked you what your definition of a cold snap was, i would probably have the urge to punch you in the face.

Sincerely: The guy dealing with a current temperature of about -10.




Posted 34 days ago.

homebrewdad
Charter Member
Birmingham, AL
2480 Posts


Hey, it's going down to ten degrees here tonight.  We won't break freezing tomorrow.  That's cold as hell for us.

Re: the fermentation activity - I was just a bit surprised it was as active as it was.  Kind of makes me want to see how cold it will go. 

Then again, this is out of my league.  My specialty, as we all know, is in stringing together screw-ups.




Posted 34 days ago.

testingapril
Charter Member
Atlanta, GA
595 Posts


I had TYB Wallonian farmhouse fermenting a 3.4 pH berliner at 50-55F a few weeks ago. It was slow as heck, but it was doing the job. Warmed it up, pitched some brett and it fermented out in a couple days. Aside from being a good bit colder initially than I planned, it worked pretty much as planned, at least so far. It goes in the keg ASAP.

I wish this was one of the strains White Labs was sequencing. I've had a hunch for a long time that it's some pseudo brett or non cerivisiae sacch. It just doesn't have the character of any other strain. It's not british, it's not belgian, it's not strictly brett, so it's a bit of an oddball.




Posted 34 days ago.

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