Lance Shaner: So, you might have
heard about kveik yeast. They are quite literally farmhouse yeast from Norway. They were used and
passed on by farmers for centuries. And, you know, normally when we think farmhouse yeast,
we think Belgian beer and we think saison and we think phenolic, peppery type beers. And that is
not what kveiks are. Despite literally being from the farmhouse, they are non-phenolic and estery,
so really you can use them like you'd use an English ale strain. But,
one of their defining unique characteristics is their thermo tolerance. They are very tolerant to
high temperatures. They ferment rapidly at these high temperatures. It's not uncommon to ferment
at 85 to 100 degrees. They seem to be happiest in the 85 to 90 range, but they are tolerant of
temperatures higher than that and will produce really good beers at these high temperatures.
There are hundreds of these strains out there in the world. We've taken a
more curative approach with our collection and just have a handful of strains that we
offer to brewers that we think each have unique characteristics. But by and large,
again, they can be used to replace English ale strains and maybe give you a slightly
different ester profile, but they're going to fit nicely into those style categories.
Hornindal is one of the more popular strains we have and it's really one of the most expressive.
It gives you a lot of fruity aromatics. It's a blend of at least nine different
strains that we do our best to maintain in that original ratio that came to us with.
And it's very high alcohol tolerant, so we have brewers that use it to make very high
alcohol stouts that they intend to do barrel aging with. Which again, I think gives you an
idea of the flexibility of these strains and how far they've come from their farmhouse origins.
One of our favorite strains is Lutra. This is actually available in two formats;
we have it in a liquid format and we also have it in the dry format. Dry obviously gives you
some advantages in that it's something you can keep in your refrigerator and it's ready
to use whenever without having to worry about shelf life. Lutra is actually a single strain
isolated from our own Hornindal blend -- it's one of those nine strains that comes from Hornindal.
And whereas the Hornindal blend as a whole is very fruity, Lutra is a lot more neutral,
which opens up other style possibilities. That includes when it's fermented at very
high temperatures; at higher temperatures it gives a slight bit of fruitiness. So,
it'd be more akin to like a Kolsch if you fermented in the 85 to 90 degree Fahrenheit
range. But if you ferment around 68 to 70, it's very what we call pseudo lager-like. It's very
clean and allows you to make lager-like beers with minimal yeast character at a temperature
that's achievable for most brewers without having to do a whole lot of intervention. It's just a
very flexible strain. You can you use it to make pseudo lagers, to make very clean ales, to make
hoppy beers. It's just a good strain to have around for when you need yeast on short notice.
Another good use for Lutra, specifically dried Lutra, is to make seltzers, especially in
combination with our Propper seltzer, which is a nutrient that provides everything that the yeast
would need when you're combining it with just sugar. As you can imagine, if you consumed just
sugar for a week, you're not going to feel very good. And same thing -- the yeast is not going
to feel very good. So, you need to combine it with a nutrient like Propper Seltzer. And in so doing
it makes, especially at warmer temperatures, you can turn around a seltzer in four or five days.
Another strain we have, the first one that was released commercially anywhere,
is the strain that we called Hothead. With later strains we've kind of kept
the nomenclature that it came with, which is where it came from. But with Hothead, again,
this was released a long time ago where nobody knew what it was, so we gave it kind of a silly
name that evoked what it could do, having fermentation at very warm temperatures. But
it's a mildly fruity strain. Again, flexible, it seems to kind of maintain this mild fruitiness no
matter what what temperature you use. Works really good as an English ale replacement.
Another kveik strain that we have is called Voss kveik,
and that gives you kind of more orange, citrusy type notes. Works
really good in American-style IPAs to give you a unique astro profile.
Another kveik we have is called Espe. That's E-S-P-E, but pronounced Espe. And
this gives a fruit cup aroma, that's what we describe it as. Again, makes very good IPAs.
Kveik yeast have come a long ways from their farmhouse origins.
After they've been introduced to brewers, home brewers and professional brewers,
they have really opened up possibilities to make beers that require very minimum fuss. You
just don't need to control your temperature or worry about those sorts of things, which throws
some of those old rules that you learned when you came into brewing on their head. It just
kind of makes things a little bit easier. You just throw it in there, have a wide temperature
range available to you. It makes brewing easier and opens up a lot of possibilities.