Trying Voss Kveik for the first time...

[J A]

I've resisted the kveik trend so far but desperate times call for desperate measures...
I'm in the process of re-vamping my garage/brewing area and am planning to try to get some whiskey wash done while systems are down. Eventually I'll have some cooling capacity in the space and can stand to brew at least a little earlier in the fall and a little later into the spring but for now my garage is staying around 90 degrees. While I'm working on infrastructure, I want to do some simple plastic-bucket fermentations to get some whiskey wash going. Since ambient temps will probably allow fermentation to get over 100F, I figured I'd get some Voss Kveik. For whiskey wash, I'm not too concerned with subtle flavor profiles.
Here's the thing, though...I'd like to get a keg or two of beer going while I'm getting reset. I'll let it ferment in buckets with no temp control. What beers can I expect to like using this yeast at high temps?
Don't say Lagers because I've had Kveik "lagers" that are "clean" and they're not that. I'm thinking that hoppy is better.
What say ye?

 

[Ozarks Mountain Brewery]

if it wasnt good yeast I wouldn't have bought this lol, mostly pale ales and ipa

 

[Craigerrr]

It actually ferments fairly clean at the higher temps, but the best style to brew with it (in my opinion) is a hazy IPA.
What I honestly don't know is what styles the Norwegians brew with it. That may be the place to look for what style to brew.
Early on I brewed a Porter with it. It took a couple of months conditioning in the bottle for the citrusy tang to fade. It was eventually a good beer, but I won't be doing that again!

 

[Craigerrr]

@Bigbre04 will no doubt give you some suggestions, I believe he uses it a lot.

Did I mention a Hazy IPA? Oh yes, of course I did. It is ideal for the style as you can go from brew day to keg in as little as 6 days, and those hop flavors and aromas are best when fresh. Not when you are fermenting in a bucket of course as you will need to carbonate it.

 

[J A]

Not when you are fermenting in a bucket of course as you will need to carbonate it.

If I do buckets (or likely carboys for beer) I can cold crash in the fermenter if I want but one way or another I'll transfer to keg chill and force carbonate. I can go from fermenter to tap in about 24 hours. I do prefer closed vessel carbonation but for quickie beers, the keg carb works just fine.

 

[Sunfire96]

I love kveik, but exclusively use Lutra. Voss tastes like rotten oranges to me. I typically brew my hoppy golden ale/session IPA with it during the summer. Works great! Any other pale/IPA/hazy would be fine. Nothing too caramelly or malty.

I also save the slurry and repitch up to 5 or 6 times. It doesn't require as many cells as normal yeast, so I split the yeast slurry from batch 1 into 2 jars. Repitch one and save the other in the back of the fridge. Once I hit Gen 5 or 6 of the repitch, I'll toss it and then pitch the Gen 1 that I saved the first time. 10+ brews out of one pack of yeast.

Here's my brew from this week, pitched at 80 but could easily pitch at 90. Pretty much anything under 100F

 

[Craigerrr]

Courses for horses, I like Voss myself when fermented at 86F or higher.

 

[Dave Y]

Long time no hear @J A

I've used Voss a lot in summer time IPA's, and the grapefruit-ish aroma from high temp fermentation pairs nicely with Citra hops. It would also do well for a 'farmhouse' ale. I agree, you won't get lager like profile from Kveik, even Lutra. If you can keep the temp around 80-82, the aroma shouldn't be as obvious and may open up other possibilities.

For IPAs, you could go NEIPA or WC 'style' depending on your taste.
I have not had great success with trying to keep the fermentation controlled with temp. My few times keeping temps ~75-76F, Voss just turtled.
IMO, Kveik strains work best between 80-95, Voss will go higher and I did a few outside fermentations with it, where I saw it as high as 103F on the tilt. That beer came out quite good (IPA).

@Bigbre04 makes good use of Voss, and probably has a few good suggestions.

 

[J A]

I typically brew my hoppy golden ale/session IPA with it during the summer.

I was thinking that I'd try the PNW Golden Ale recipe with it. That was a solid beer and seems like a good candidate.

IMO, Kveik strains work best between 80-95, Voss will go higher and I did a few outside fermentations with it, where I saw it as high as 103F on the tilt. That beer came out quite good (IPA).

@Bigbre04 makes good use of Voss, and probably has a few good suggestions.

My space is staying between 86 and 90 so I assume that during active fermentation, wort temp will hit 100 or better. It's not hard for me to keep my controlled fermenter temps in a good range with my glycol chiller but it's tough to cold-crash. It'll be good to get a few batches going while my system is disrupted and it'll be interesting to see how this yeast does.
I assume that @Bigbre04 will chime in at some point.

 

[BarbarianBrewer]

I was thinking that I'd try the PNW Golden Ale recipe with it. That was a solid beer and seems like a good candidate.

I agree this would be a good choice.

I'm currently fermenting a Pineapple SMaSH with 2-row, El Dorado, and Hornindal Kviek yeast. That yeast lists its upper limit at 95-98°F (35-37°C). That would be a good candidate as well.

 

[Brew Cat]

If you are using a bucket very easy to use a swamp cooler
can easily keep the temperature 70F or lower just by rotating frozen water bottles
I've never used Kviek yeast but probably be easy in a SC at your temps

 

[J A]

If you are using a bucket very easy to use a swamp cooler
can easily keep the temperature 70F or lower just by rotating frozen water bottles
I've never used Kviek yeast but probably be easy in a SC at your temps

I've used the swamp cooler method plenty of times in the past but that's not what I'm after in this case. For one thing, I'll be dealing with up to 5 buckets and that would require a big vessel to hold water and buckets, a lot of ice to cool to a useful temp and a lot of effort in maintaining the system. I'm interested in filling some buckets, sticking them in a corner in the heat and letting them do their thing for a week while I'm rebuilding my garage space. Once that's done, I can keep ambient lower and will have my regular brew system back up and running so I have full temp control for nearly 30 gallons of wort at any given time.

 

[Bigbre04]

Spent the weekend sweating my ass off in central GA tent camping for a buddies birthday. good fun, shit load so beers, nice to finally use my new tent, but it was warm and swampy. At least the site had power so we brought a box fan to avoid death. I guess i currently identify as a kviek yeast, wish it was more lager temps though.

I have used voss to ferment lots of styles with decent success. it will make a solid golden ale/lager if you do it right. I will look back at my notes.

I regularly use voss for my sour ale and for my Juicy IPAs. i have found that if you knock out around 96 it will get to about 102-103 on its own before it finishes and cools down. I find the warmer the temps the better and "cleaner" the yeast is.

juicy session IPA
https://www.brewersfriend.com/homebrew/recipe/embed/1614488

what style are you thinking you wanna brew? i will pull out my notes and see what all i have done.

 

[J A]

what style are you thinking you wanna brew? i will pull out my notes and see what all i have done.

I'll be doing a big batch of whiskey mash - 4 or 5 buckets - and then see about doing a couple of quickie batches of beer to get something on tap soon. It would be cool if I could pull off my regular UK Golden Ale and my Irish Red that I usually as a split batch. For a hoppy beer, my PNW Golden Ale should be pretty perfect or something like the Session Pale you referenced would be good.

 

[Bigbre04]

@J A honestly i would flip the schedule. brew the beers split the yeast and use second or 3rd gens to bang out the washes. i bet that voss would do well making wash.

all of the beers you mentioned lean towards hoppy. so those would work well. especially if you do some basic american hops(citra, mosaic, chinook) all would hide or compliment any yeast flavors that shine through at low IBUs.

had chiller issues for a while in 2024 so i ended up brewing a bunch of styles with voss.

Oatmeal Porter brewed 9/6/24 got a 3.88 on untapped if that matters. probably would have scored better in the winter but so it goes.
www.brewersfriend.com/homebrew/recipe/embed/1501840

also brewed a batch of my coconut brown ale that turned out well. 3.95 on untappd (brew this in 2024 with voss and then more recently with chico)
https://www.brewersfriend.com/homebrew/recipe/embed/1629665

made several golden ales with voss

strong gold 3.86 on untappd
https://www.brewersfriend.com/homebrew/recipe/embed/1488468

normal golden lager recipe but with voss

 

[J A]

@J A honestly i would flip the schedule. brew the beers split the yeast and use second or 3rd gens to bang out the washes. i bet that voss would do well making wash.

all of the beers you mentioned lean towards hoppy. so those would work well. especially if you do some basic american hops(citra, mosaic, chinook) all would hide or compliment any yeast flavors that shine through at low IBUs.

I've thought about just that and will likely do some combination. Could build up yeast with repitching. I have to be a little careful about fermentation quality using essentially open buckets. - I'll throw lids on them but they'll be loosely fitted. I found a cheap brick of yeast so I'm not too concerned with reusing for economy's sake. We'll see how things work out. I may start mashing something tomorrow.

When I make my UK Golden or my Irish Red, I tend to keep IBUs below 25 and not add a lot of flavor hopping. For the PNW Golden, I'm up in the low/mid 30s for IBUs and do much more late hopping/whirlpool for hop flavor. I suspect that'll be my best beer of those three. For a Pale, I like high 30s to mid 40s for IBUs.

 

[Mont Y. Märzen]

I'm surprised no one suggest Farmhouse/Saison/Raw Ale. That's what the Norweigians have been brewing with it for who knows how long, and likely how the strains came to be. Something along those lines would be my first guess. I once made a short-brew 5-day 'Pina Colada' Ale using Hornindal and served it straight from the spigot of my BigMouthBubbler at a homebrew fest. It wasn't even carbonated and it was mighty tasty, good 'on the rocks' too!

One thing to consider is pH. I've used Kveik quite a bit and I ditched Voss precisely because of the Orange Tang I didn't like, but that was just for the one brew where it was way out of place and I never got back to it. Lutra is indeed the cleanest so far, but it is still tangy. (just not Orange) Talking with some other brewers and mead makers, the general suspicion is final pH. We're treating Kveik like regular yeast and only paying mind to mash pH for conversion.

For my next trick, I will attempt to mash at the highest pH of the range I can muster (≈5.6 or so) and do a shorter boil so that I knock out at a higher pH, then see where the Kveik takes it and if that gets rid of the acidic tang in the final product. There isn't much I can do to reliably raise pH that doesn't cause other flavor problems, save perhaps planning for dilution with distilled water at knockout, which I might do as a test on a split batch.

I've started measuring pH at more points in the process and this might help me make it a habit, especially for stats at packaging. I've recently stumbled on the concept of checking Titratable Acidity in brewing, and this might be key for proper use of Kveik in conventional styles. (not necessary of course for traditional Nordic Farmhouse brews)

 

[Bigbre04]

I'm surprised no one suggest Farmhouse/Saison/Raw Ale. That's what the Norweigians have been brewing with it for who knows how long, and likely how the strains came to be. Something along those lines would be my first guess. I once made a short-brew 5-day 'Pina Colada' Ale using Hornindal and served it straight from the spigot of my BigMouthBubbler at a homebrew fest. It wasn't even carbonated and it was mighty tasty, good 'on the rocks' too!

One thing to consider is pH. I've used Kveik quite a bit and I ditched Voss precisely because of the Orange Tang I didn't like, but that was just for the one brew where it was way out of place and I never got back to it. Lutra is indeed the cleanest so far, but it is still tangy. (just not Orange) Talking with some other brewers and mead makers, the general suspicion is final pH. We're treating Kveik like regular yeast and only paying mind to mash pH for conversion.

For my next trick, I will attempt to mash at the highest pH of the range I can muster (≈5.6 or so) and do a shorter boil so that I knock out at a higher pH, then see where the Kveik takes it and if that gets rid of the acidic tang in the final product. There isn't much I can do to reliably raise pH that doesn't cause other flavor problems, save perhaps planning for dilution with distilled water at knockout, which I might do as a test on a split batch.

I've started measuring pH at more points in the process and this might help me make it a habit, especially for stats at packaging. I've recently stumbled on the concept of checking Titratable Acidity in brewing, and this might be key for proper use of Kveik in conventional styles. (not necessary of course for traditional Nordic Farmhouse brews)

confused about the end goal of increasing the ph. i dont think this will make a big difference. if anything it will cause more stress and produce more esters.

my session ipa generally ends up 4.1-4.3. it is fairly consistent.

one thing i might try sometime is spunding it. i wonder if that would be possible???

 

[Craigerrr]

I don't spund per se, but I do ferment under pressure pretty much right at the start. Maybe that is a factor in not getting the unpleasant orange tang that others are getting (using VOSS)

 

[Brew Cat]

I haven't used the Kviek yeast because I can control my temperature which is the only reason I can see using it. I use specific yeast for specific styles for specific outcomes
Enlighten me on what it brings to the table other than being a plow horse