BREATHING LIFE INTO CRAFT BEER
Ello ello,
If you’ve been to a brewery, any brewery at all, in the last few years, you’ve no doubt noticed the presence of a beer quite straightforwardly called a “Hazy IPA.” It’s exactly that, a hazy IPA, with a heavy focus on the fruitier flavors that modern hops have to offer, and only a vague bitterness in most cases, and it’s a wildly popular style - so much so, that at the world’s most important craft competition, the Great American Beer Fest (GABF), it took over in 2018 (right?) as the most entered category over IPA for the first time in what I think had been decades. Which is to say, it’s big business; free cash, essentially, to any brewery that sells one.
And while these beers have been brewed with a number of traditional ale yeasts, they’ve also provided a wonderful tapestry and fertile experimental manifold for a new and increasingly popular type of yeast: Kveik yeast (which is a bit of a redundancy, since Kveik, like the old english “quicken,” means, in essence, life-giver, or yeast in modern parlance, hence this post’s title). These often-fruity yeasts, which ferment at high temperatures (think blood temp) and, more importantly, ferment insanely quickly, are rapidly gaining a large foothold in the brewing world, so today we’ll be looking at their history (in brief), their current usage, and their very bright future.
History
I’ve brushed over the history in a previous post, and have referenced this insanely educational roughly hour-long video in which Lars Marius Garshol, the Kveik Guy, gives an exhaustive presentation on the topic, but I’ll summarize the key features in bullet point form:
Since barley apparently doesn’t love growing in the colder north, like in Norway, there’s a finite amount of grain, and so they’d traditionally brew, say, twice a year. That meant, since fridges weren’t a thing, that they had to essentially top crop the yeast using some sort of wooden manifold (like one of these gorgeous wreaths/rings), let it dry, either on that manifold or in a jar or something, and then rehydrate it later. Thus, Kveiks love being dried
Back in the day, thermometers weren’t a thing either, so you had three measurable temperatures: ice cold, boiling, and blood temp (neutral to a submerged finger). That’s around 95˚F (35˚C), which is where Kveiks most often ferment, and certainly ferment the fastest (thanks Arhenius)
Finally, Kveik brewers would often drink or bottle their Kveik beers after as little as 24-48 hours, putting selective pressure on the yeast to ferment that fast
Bonus: apparently, yeast produce esters in part to neutralize the acids that, for example, trees produce as a natural chemical antimicrobial agent; wild! (Source: the Lars talk)
That’s the quick and dirty version, but there’s an entire book on the subject if you’re curious.
Current Use
Due to their incredible speed (read: ability to print money) and pleasant fruity flavors, Kveiks have become massively popular in IPAs, but also in the occasional Stout or miscellaneous ale as well, and I suspect their general use in beers that don’t need a specific ester profile will continue to grow. Their attenuation (read: the efficiency with which yeast eat wort sugars, which translates into body and mouthfeel, among other things, higher attenuation beers being “thinner” than lower attenuation beers, all else held constant) is on the medium-high side for ale yeasts, which probably limits their use to pale beers above, oh, 5.5%, but that’s still a huge number of beers today, especially given the hold IPAs overall have on the craft market.
What interests me these days, though, is the growing number of “clean” Kveik yeasts like Omega Yeast Labs’ Lutra, that is, Kveik strains that produce beers with little to no esters. These strains produce beers so clean that, to the lay-person, they might pass as lagers, which is of insane economic value. If I can brew a “Pilsner” or, more likely, a Munich Dunkel- or Schwarzbier-type beer in two weeks, instead of the traditional, say, nine (give or take strong opinions north or south of that figure), I have a golden goose on my hands. A single family of very fast strains that produces Hazy IPAs and Lager-type beers could very well provide the backbone of an ultra-profitable brewery, ale and lager yeasts be damned.
And while the viability of Kveiks as lager-killers is unclear, it seems that more breweries are giving this idea a shot, and for lagers that have a strong malt character behind which the yeast can hide a bit (so, not Pilsners or Helleses), I suspect I could personally be tricked by a skilled brewer.
The Future is Kveik
It goes without saying, giving my glowing praise, that I think these strains will capture more and more market share, and potentially dethrone any strain that doesn’t have a unique ester profile (so the English strains would be safe, but maybe not something like San Diego Super Yeast or a forgettable/niche lager strain). I really don’t have anything negative to say about Kveiks, I’ll add - I haven’t produced any beers I’ve absolutely loved with them, but I think that’s more a result of imperfect recipes, and using Kveik strains in the wrong (but otherwise perfectly fine) recipes, than the strains themselves. All of our Hazies are made with Kveiks by the way (probably Voss - I’d have to ask to be sure).
Beyond this, given the buzz around lagers, you better believe that a wave of experimentation with passable Kveik-driven pseudo-lagers is coming, assuming they can be brewed convincingly well. I read an article recently that compared such beers to one produced with a workhorse lager yeast that was simply fermented at 68˚, and that was the beer that pulled ahead at no real time cost, so it’s possible that this wave will quickly crash on the shores of reality, but the likelihood one way or another is anyone’s guess.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, it’s worth noting that Kveik yeasts, which require no refrigeration, flocculate famously well (which minimizes or eliminates the need for mechanical filtration), and have somewhat high attenuations (which can also be read as an overall efficiency in turning malt into alcohol) are far and away the most planet-friendly yeasts for breweries in warm climates, from an energy perspective, and from a malt efficiency perspective. I’ll readily grant that british cask ales, brewed in cold-enough climates that no refrigeration is needed during fermentation, would perform about as well, but that’s a big “if” in a warming planet, especially as we look to the future. For this reason alone I see Kveiks dethroning cold lagering (though maybe not lager yeasts!) in the future.
Conclusion
It’s a pretty wild twist of fate that a new set of yeasts should fall into our laps several decades into this craft beer revolution, and given the wonders they promise, it may take decades more until their full potential is teased out, but in the meantime, you can slurp any of our Hazy IPAs in wonderment as you scroll through SkyScanner for tickets to Norway.
Cheers,
Adrian “Hinga Dinga Durgen” Febre