Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Urthel Hop-It yeast

A few days ago I tasted Urthel Hop-It. Some people might call it a Belgian IPA, but I prefer what the brewmaster herself calls it: a hoppy blonde. In a previous post I mentioned that I prefer balaced beers, so why should I even bother to try it? First of all, I liked the other Urthel beers I tried, secondly it is hopped with Magnum, Styrian goldings and Saaz (the last two being personal favorites) and thirdly it has live sediment so I can collect the yeast. Being brewed by a Belgian brewer, it didn't surprise me that it in fact was more of a hoppy blond than an IPA. The bitterness was higher then in most other belgian beers, but it was still balanced and it didn't make my tongue curl. The taste and aroma were, as expected, a nice blend between belgian yeast character and the nice fruitiness and spiciness of the hops.
After drinking the beer I of course saved the sediment. Luckily, I didn't plate it out immediately. I made a small 5 ml starter first, which turned out to be a good idea as it took several days to take off. I then made a streak plate and now I have a few single colonies to save for later. One more strain in the bank! Let's hop Urthel doesn't use the T-58 yeast... That would have made the whole effort rather useless :) Or a good training session.
As you can see on the picture, one colony is bigger then the others, so I saved that one as well as a normal size colony. One day I might test if there's a difference.

1 comment:

Maarten said...

Today I recieved an e-mail from Hildegard van Ostaden, brewer of the Urthel beers. She confirmed that she uses an own yeast strain. They use the same strain for all beers, don't filter, and use the same strain for bottle conditioning.

Post a Comment