Not ever satisfied with mediocre beer John tried his hand again at brewing a Belgian White Ale. However, he ordered the wrong yeast strain when he purchased the fine kit from Northern Brewer. Facing a potential failure before he even started a new plan was devised. Culture up some bottle dregs and brew that White Ale something proper!

John tried a culturing Belgian White Ale Yeast from a few different sources. Ultimately, Allagash White work out the best for him. He propagated a small starter from a few bottles and then stepped up the starter to an appropriate size pitch.

The end result was a great beer that was actually reminiscent of Allagash and Hoegarten. Both great Belgian White Ales. The beer had a excellent malt aroma with floral accents of coriander and lavender or chamomile. The flavor was slightly spicy and very dry. Fully attenuated the all the beer flavors seemed to pop out nicely. That level of attenuation certainly speaks to how well the yeast culturing went.

This beer had a nice nobel hop character to it backed with a solid grainy presence which we think was the oatmeal portion of the grist coming through the predominant Pilsner malt backbone. Very well balanced recipe. As the beer warmed we could finally make note of the bitter orange peel that went into the late boil.

Interestingly, this grist and yeast combination didn’t lend much of any citrus notes. At least not to my palate. I prefer a witbier to have a little more citrus character. However, some people don’t care for it. John’s example lends itself to more flexibility to the drinker. You could easily squeeze a wedge of orange or lemon in this one if you prefer that. Maybe next time I drink one I’ll give that a try.

Overall, it was a successful attempt at culturing up some yeast from the bottle. Interestingly, we could truly identify the yeast character as distinctly Allagash. Being that we only live less than two hours away from Allagash we get Allagash White quite a bit here and are very familiar with the beers’ taste. It was pretty cool to see that replicated at the home brew level.

Got any experience with bottle dregs and making a classic example of your favorite beer style? We’d love to here about it. Drop a comment or send us an email.

BREW ON!