New Nordic Yeast

[mashani]

I have my preciousssses.

IMG_2548.jpg (156.27 KiB) Viewed 1096 times

[BlackDuck]

Fermented apples....interesting.


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[Beer-lord]

Heard of it, never used it but it's on my radar.

[mashani]

So I will post what I make in this thread.

I know I'm going to make a "New Nordic" beer, because this yeast was used to make a bunch of them by various people. I am going to mix old and new, so I will use Crystal Rye (new as opposed to the kind of malted rye which they would use for old school beers, which is unavailable here, it's not like regular rye or flaked rye either) smoked malt (old) except that what I am going to use is oak smoked wheat (wheat = new, oak = old as Nordic beers are often put in oak). Pilsner for the rest of the grain bill. I am going to use Juniper (old) except since I don't have access to fronds, it will be just berries (new). I will likely do a juniper infusion and use that for the mash, and then finish the actual beer with more juniper. I'll likely use some of my left over Triskel hops since they are low AA and will pretty much stay out of the way if I don't use a lot, except for a floral note that won't be off putting or seem "hoppy", but still they would count as "new". I will likely add some orange blossom honey as a sugar feeding once primary settles down (honey is old, except orange blossoms don't grow in Nordic countries so that's new LOL". And of course this yeast, which I will likely ramp up in temps over time to get it pretty hot, as yeast flavors and juniper are what drives Nordic beer.

I have to decide if I actually want to boil it, as lots of authentic Nordic beers are not really boiled (in this case the hops would be boiled with the juniper berries in water to make the mash water infusion, which then would be cooled to temps desired for mashing, but then the mash it's boiled later). I am drifting towards doing it without a boil and going with that process. But I think I will still heat it up to 160 and hold it there for a while. Otherwise for sure I'd end up with New Nordic Brett Beer LOL.

I'm likely going to make a fruit beer (plum or apple, probably plum, maybe both?) and a hefe, and some kind of Belgian or Saison with the rest.

[Beer-lord]

Call it Nordic Plapple Beer.
Interesting stuff that I will follow.

[mashani]

So, besides using a lot of juniper, rye, smoked malts, an maybe some bog myrtle (its pretty much the only other herb used besides juniper it seems, and I know I like it combined with juniper, so I think maybe I will since I have some), these are things I apparently have to do to brew Nordic beer properly according to authentic Nordic farmhouse brewing traditions.

1) Arevetten. Which is to sacrifice wort to the spirit of the fire.

2) Gjaerkauk. As in scream something when I pitch the yeast. This is to keep away evil beer spoiling spirits. I could use your help here. What should I scream?. "go away fooking brett" seems kind of lame. Apparently there are "who's got the best gjaerkauk" contests now.

3) Guard my fermenting wort with steel, use it to frighten away evil spirits. I don't have a Viking sword, but I do have a Katana and a Gladius. One of those will have to do. I know a Kata for the Katana that is about getting bad spirits out of the practice space, so maybe I will do that. I just have to make sure I don't stab or slash my fermenter LOL.

4) Keep it quite where the beer is fermenting, because noise attracts evil spirits or something, not sure exactly why. Maybe the Gjaerkauk is all the yeast can handle. I just know quiet is desirable. So I have to do my Kata quietly.

[TonyKZ1]

Wow, the things that you learn here on BeerBorg. I might have to start trying some of those steps on my fermenters.

[bpgreen]

Are you using any hops or just the juniper? I used juniper in a gruit once, but I used sweet gale and wormwood instead of bog myrtle. That was over 4 years ago, and I don't remember how it tasted.

[mashani]

Sweet Gale is the same thing as Bog Myrtle as far as I know.

I am going to use hops, but not for flavor/aroma, just as infection prevention and slight balancing. Just 7-10 theoretical AAUs of hops. I have some low AA triskel hops laying around that need to be used in something, so this is where I'm putting some. Most of the bitterness will actually come from the Juniper.

This is going to be done where I boil most of the juniper berries (3/4oz of them) and all of the hops in the mash/sparge water for a few minutes, and then let the mash water cool down to my mash temp, then mash with that water and sparge with it. Because that's pretty much how they do it, except they are boiling the fronds when they have them, where I don't have those, so I'm using berries in a suggested proportion. I'm going to add another 1/4oz of berries and the bog myrtle at about T-10 in the actual boil. I might use mugwort instead, I just was digging through my herbs and noticed that's what I have the most of, and I like it with Juniper. Or I might use nothing but Juniper. I don't know... maybe I'll split the batch and put something in half of it. I have wormwood, but it's not normally used in this kind of beverage - even bog myrtle/sweet gale is rarely used these days. Mostly they just use Juniper. If I use mugwort, it doesn't need any wormwood for sure, as it's got a similar although slightly less potent bittering effect.

Anyways, they have found that even just boiling the hops in the water like this before the mash works well as infection protection. Infection being lactic acid bacteria, not brett, it won't do a dang thing to my brett, that's just going to be a matter of luck.

[mashani]

So I went ahead and did my New Nordic beer. It ended up as this (for 5.5 gallons):

The mash water for this entire batch had 1.5oz of <2.6% AA Triskel hops and 0.75oz of Juniper boiled in it for 10 minutes. I then cooled it to mash temps and used this to mash my PM (I can't do full mash for 5 gallons). The hops and juniper berries went right into the mash. What was left, I strained and cooled and used as top up water.

The mash was:

4.5# Pilsner
2# Oak Smoked Wheat (more authentic would be birch smoked malts, and put the beer in oak, but I really like the character of this stuff).
1# Crystal Rye

To that I added:
3# MoreBeer Pilsner LME @10
1.5# Orange Blossom Honey @flameout.

I was going to add it post primary, but went ahead and added it @flameout and let it stand for 30 minutes so it would pasteurize, instead. I did this because looking at it, I saw that it had a good bit of "what looked to be bee parts" and other "floaties of mystery" which is something that sometimes happens with raw unfiltered honey... I don't think the Vikings secondaried their beer anyways, so this is probably more authentic even though I'm not trying to be totally authentic.

@10, I added 11 grams of Mugwort, and another 1/4oz of Juniper berries. Mugwort should probably be sweet gale/bog myrtle in theory, or in modern times at least not at all, but I don't have any (I thought I did but I don't), and I wanted something besides just Juniper. I like Mugwort with Juniper anyways, so I'll be happy with this. My bet is that Vikings and other Germanic people messing around on the British Isles back in the day probably used plenty of Mugwort in their beer anyways, as that along with costal wormwood would have been plentiful and used by the locals.

My OG was 1.064

I'm going to try to ferment this in the mid 70s, but it's not so easy this time of year. I pitched at 74 and I'm hoping the yeast activity keeps it warm, I'm going to wrap my fermenters in blankets and add heat if necessary. (the Nordic farmhouse brewers do all this stuff too, I'm not crazy... they do it even hotter then this).

Oh, so this stuff was pretty close to my pots limits during the boil, and I had some foaming problems, so wort got sacrificed to my burner, which is the closest thing I have to a fireplace that I can actually light a fire in, so I considered that taken care of. Which was nice because my hydro sample tasted fooking awesome so I drank all of it.

As far as my Gjaerkauk, I just yelled "LARSBLOG LARSBLOG LARSBLOG!" Because I got a lot of inspiration from LarsBlog. I could not make any of the actual recipes posted there as I simply don't have the right ingredients, most especially Juniper fronds that are guaranteed to not be toxic, and I don't have the right kind of yeast for real, just this New Nordic kind - although the stuff in this blend may very well be in some of those brewers home yeast strains, which sometimes have a whole bunch of strains mixed together like this, but I don't know for sure. Some of those folks still use yeast rings, so who knows what's on them. Now I want one too, it would be cool... except I am sure mine would pick up brett c pretty quickly.

But anyways, I took a lot of what I read there, My Gruit and my Belgian brewing experience (as in I used a bit more "sugar" (honey) then may be normal to dry it out and balance it more to my tastes hopefully), mixed with what I read and how I am imagining this yeast will taste based on descriptions... and this is what came out of it, so I hope it turns out good.

I did not pitch a huge amount of yeast like I normally do, because I didn't want to mess up the blends proportions and I wasn't sure if since this has characteristic esters that are wheat beerish or belgianish, if pitching too much would suppress them. I am trusting LarsBlog on this too, since apparently some of those farmhouse brewers just pitch a chunk of their local yeast, the same size all the time, regardless of their batch size and it works for them. And the esters are what these beers are about besides the Juniper. Apparently they get lots of citrus esters with some of the yeast they have in their parts.

[Inkleg]

Great read this morning Dave. Looks like you covered the traditions so far now just guard it with steel. Looking forward to the follow ups.

[alb]

"Gamla lombungr, sugandi toti tik madr."
Thou art morons, sucking at the teat of your bitch dog mother.

http://www.housebarra.com/EP/ep04/12norsecurse.html

[mashani]

"Gamla lombungr, sugandi toti tik madr."
Thou art morons, sucking at the teat of your bitch dog mother.

http://www.housebarra.com/EP/ep04/12norsecurse.html

That is awesome, I will bookmark for future curses against evil beer spirits.

BTW, any fears of my lower pitch rates causing a lot of lag were answered this morning when I woke up to happily fermenting beverages chugging away at 72 degrees.

[alb]

Do you have one of these?

http://gwyl.io/viking-beer-horn-glass/

[BlackDuck]

That's awesome!!


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