Why YOU Should Use Kveik Yeast in 2023

now on today's video i'm going to address something that you may have noticed if you've watched even just one of my videos which is that i almost exclusively just use one type of yeast kavik vos yeast it was time for michael vikvoss used to be added in when michael vikka voss yeast it was time to sprinkle my lutrie yeast in i was keen on this brew day to try out kawaiki voss yeast to make the cider in went my kevik voss yeast it was time to add my kevik boss yeast i'm daryl smith and i'm a home brewer in the uk and on this channel i share with you my experiences of making fun and rewarding things like homebrew so when there's actually so much variety out there there's so many different types and styles of yeast why is it that i only use one well let me crack open a beer that i've recently made using it and i'll explain why i'm so obsessed with using cavite yeast so this is a pale ale that i made using lutra so the biggest thing that makes kviky special is that it's massive temperature range that it's able to ferment at it can ferment at normal fermenting temperatures as well as lower ones you could go down as low as say 10 degrees c but you can also ferment at very high temperatures say 43 degrees c is the highest that it can go but i really could probably go higher if you really wanted to now that's massively warmer than any other yeast can really handle a lot of them will give off bad esters and have a terrible flavor profile in fact some varieties of kovic really love those hot fermentation temperatures what's really interesting about fight yeast as well is that each strain of kevik gives you a different flavor profile depending on if you're fermenting it low or if you're fermenting it on high heat also doesn't really mind big temperature changes so if you're like me and you have no temperature control at home this is a huge game changer so apparently its origins are from when norwegian farmers would start putting the yeast into their beer very early on in the brewing process i mean like after they've obviously boiled but whilst it was cooling down they didn't let it cool down for as long as um other brewers and this has resulted in the yeast to evolve into handling high temperatures so despite being able to handle high temperatures cavite yeast doesn't give off off flavors and it doesn't give off dme which are things that can really hinder beer when you don't have accurate temperature control so currently there's about 20 different strains of kovite yeast the most popular being boss lutra hot heads and loki all of them have their own different flavor profiles and quirks lutra is really special because it gives you really clear beer results in beers with the most lager-like taste in fact um brewers can use lutra to create pseudo lagers fake lagers very quickly although big lager fans would argue that it's not really lager but if it tastes like it and it looks like it it kind of is it so i started home brewing when i first moved to this house about four years ago now and i love it here but we've got no garage we've got no shed space you know limited space in all of our bedrooms but we do have a weird void space that a previous owner built into the house which did result in me being able to have quite a lot of space for storage which is why all of my grains and brewing equipment is up there but it is white i'm not able to have very good temperature control with my beards the void space i learnt pretty quickly why i tried fermenting in it that it can become really cold in the winter but also really hot in the summer and so can result in huge swings of temperature if i'm trying to ferment in there the first few months of brewing i had big swings of quality really depending as it turned out what temperature it was outside but one day when i was reading articles on brewing advice i discovered kvike and i ordered some vos as that's a very popular strain and has a lot of great qualities for ales and so i thought i'd give it a go i immediately fell in love with it my first beer made using it was a black ipa and it was immediately the best beer that i'd ever made in my life and that moment i knew that there was something really special about kevik so these are the top 10 things that i love about using kavik yeast so as previously mentioned it loves hot temperatures like 43 degrees c is really high for a yeast you know most yeasts are either dying or causing loads of off flavors of that kind of temperature but kavik is loving it and so you can brew any time of the year in any country you know lots of people who say brew in brazil spain you know places which are always hot or hot most of the time you've got very little option with yeast unless you've got accurate temperature control which of course can be costly so the second thing that i love about kavite yeast is because it's able to handle hotter temperatures it results in it fermenting really fast i mean silly fast i ferment most of my beers with kevik in about six to seven days brewers have been able to brew drinkable beer within three days using it if you are able to keg your beer you can brew it on say monday and drink it on wednesday now some of the benefits of this speed is one that you can just realize oh i fancy a beer this weekend and then brew it um within a week other benefits uh is that you don't need to have as many fermenting vessels no other styles of yeast they may need to ferment for a month so if you're someone who likes to brew two or three times in a month then you're going to need to have many more fermenting vessels whereas if you're using kvik then you know that you're probably not going to need more than just one fermenting vessel it can also help speed up your brew day because you only need to lower your beard's temperature to say 40 degrees c rather than 20 degrees it might save you 20 to 30 minutes depending on how good your cooling system actually is the fourth thing that i love about kvik yeast is that you don't need to cold crash it it's able to push away off flavors itself without the need for a cold crash kevik tends to flocculate quite quickly and so it collects itself together at the bottom or sometimes the top of your fermenter very quickly cavite yeast is really easy to harvest after it's finished fermenting you've got a few options of what you can do with it so that you can reuse it and that could be that you take the top crop so any flocculated yeast that floated to the top you could put into a jar or you could get yeast sediment and reuse that some people also bottle or keg their kevik yeast on the same day that they're brewing another batch of beer and then what you can do is once you've cooled your water you could put it directly onto the yeast that was just finished fermenting and then it will immediately uh kick into fermenting another batch of beer um i've done this a couple of times before and the results are amazing you get an even faster fermentation because that yeast is ready to go uh the sixth thing that i love about kovite kiss is that you don't need to make a starter with it you can use a very small amount of it and it will multiply rapidly and so you don't need to waste money on making a starter and you know that's making starters can take up time so you don't need to worry about wasting any the seventh thing that i love about kavik yeast is that it's really cheap um i got this packet of kevik vos from the malt miller for four pounds 30 this could be the only boss i ever need to buy as i previously mentioned you can top or bottom crop it and just keep reusing it and so long as you look after it that you can keep using the same one over and over and over again i personally actually get rid of all of my kevik once a year and get a new packet just so that i know that it's not got any bacteria that's made its way into the slurries or that um it's like evolved slightly and isn't um fermenting in the same way as what i expected but you know for four pound 30 every time that i get a new generation that's pretty good this is what the slurry of a bottom crop would look like um i haven't got any top crop to show you but i actually tend to now use the top crop most of the time i'm probably never going to use this one actually but this is lutra that i got from the bottom of this very bit so the eighth thing that i love about kevik yeast is that every single strain is completely different i've personally actually only used lutra and vos and they're so different um that you wouldn't realize that they're so closely related lutra is really special because it makes beer very clear and it is incredibly neutral so the yeast doesn't give loads of yeast character so you really can just taste the hops and the malt that you've brewed with so it results in really balanced beers with very little influence from the yeast now vos is very different to that it does give a bit of a farmhouse taste as well as like orange peel it really helped with my chocolate orange stout that i made around christmas time and it did help impart those orangey tastes i tend to alternate between using both types of yeast and i adore the two but i'm really keen to work my way through the rest of the strains and see what amazing attributes all the others have so the ninth thing that i love about using kovik yeast is that it can make you a better brewer um because it alleviates a lot of the things which brewers can find difficult such as temperature control which i was really finding so hard when i first started brewing i'm trying to brew as cheaply as i possibly can with as little space as i can use and so discovering kovite yeast really did help me be in the hobby i think not finding it could have pushed me out of being interested in making beer i just can't afford the things that i need to be able to use the other kinds of yeast that's the bottom line i can't afford to brew in the way that um maybe i'm expected to you know i'm a home brewer on the internet and you know i watch lots of amazing videos where people are using very expensive equipment which i would love to have but i can't afford it i don't have the space for it but kovite geese has made the hobby accessible for me and i thank it and love it for what it's done for me the final tenth thing that i love about kovite yeast is that you don't have to just use it to make beer i've had success making cider with it i know that others have made wine and mead out of it so there's so much variety with it just using the same strains you know i use kavite boss for both cider and beer and you wouldn't have known that they were the same yeast being used for it so again saving you money because you don't need to buy multiple yeasts to do different brewing disciplines so i hope you learned something in this video at the very least maybe you've learned why you'll only ever see me brewing with kaweikis that's not to say that i won't ever ever brew with other yeast but at the moment there's just no point i love kevik so much and it's helped me become a better brewer if you're a home brewer and you really have never tried it give it a go and just see how amazing the results can be thank you so much for watching this video if you have enjoyed it then please do like and subscribe to the channel and let me know in the comments what's the best beer that you've ever brewed with kevik yeast and what's your favorite strain of it

Channel: Kveiksmith Daryl

Views: 10,780

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Id: 9ldb8Fiuu6I

Length: 12min 42sec (762 seconds)

Published: Thu May 12 2022