# Orval Yeast Culture



## jakub76 (1/6/10)

I have cultured the yeast from an Orval bottle. After stepping it up 4 times over 10 days I have a visible, light coloured yeast sediment. Well I did until I decanted and fed it with some more wort. The smell I noticed was very similar to brewing with bread yeast, it reminded me of my late high school years making wine out of strawberry jam and bread yeast secretly in my bedroom wardrobe.
Anyway, is it supposed to smell like that? What ever the dominant microbe is here I've got heaps of it.
I have done the research on Orval clones and I'm tempted to just use this yeast in the primary to speed things up, anyone do this successfully?


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## eamonnfoley (1/6/10)

Was the beer in good nick? Rare to get Belgian beers in good condition in Australia, and I would assume the yeast sediment would be in pretty bad shape more often than not.

I would recommend against using it, in the same way I wouldn't touch Belgian imports.


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## jakub76 (1/6/10)

The beer was fine. True enough there seems to be a bit of dead yeast in the darker trub but when it settles there's plenty of healthy looking, lighter coloured yeast now that it's been fed up a few times. It just smells like baker's yeast is all.


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## Sammus (1/6/10)

Ask swinging beef about this, he'll know a bit. He has an obsession with brett and lacto, and gets all his brett and lacto from orval bottles. Usually he'll ferment with a normal belgian yeast, then tip the dregs of a few orval bottles in the fermenter in at the end and let the brett eat up whats left over a month or so. I know he's done at least one beer that was just made from orval dregs, man is it big on the brett and lacto... unless you really know you like the flavours these unusual bacteria have to offer, I wouldn't recommend doing a whole batch with them.


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## manticle (1/6/10)

I assume you know they secondary inocculate and bottle condition with a brettanomyces strain? This can infect your brewery so keep your experiments separate.

I love Orval and use the dregs in my sour beers. I'm not sure what their primary strain is though


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## jakub76 (1/6/10)

manticle said:


> I assume you know they secondary inocculate and bottle condition with a brettanomyces strain? This can infect your brewery so keep your experiments separate.
> 
> I love Orval and use the dregs in my sour beers. I'm not sure what their primary strain is though


Yeah, scouring the Orval web site as well as the many related threads on this site and others I have come up with this...
4kg Belgian Pale
250g Crystal 60
300g CaraMunich
700g Candi Sugar to bring up to an OG of 1.060
Mash at 65C
Equal amounts (18g)of Hallertau and Styrian Goldings bittering additions
18g SG flavour and 18g Aroma additions all pointing to around 33IBU
4-5 days in primary with a belgian ale yeast then into secondary with the harvested (Brett) bottle yeast and a 10g dry hop addition - should be Strisselspalt but subbing for Hallertau should be very close and will save me $8. Then I plan to bottle as normal bulk priming with dextrose.
I had been considering just using the bottle cultured yeast for primary. Surely it's not only the Brett that survives in bottles. I've managed to grow a fair amount of viable yeast out of one bottle of Orval, I assume it would be a blend of both primary and secondary yeast...wouldn't it?
Has anyone else had experience culturing Orval yeast - did it smell like baker's yeast?


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## Mobbee007 (1/6/10)

+1 Ask Swinging beef
from memory he just ditch half his gear cause it all got brett in it so be wary


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## Sammus (1/6/10)

RexBanner said:


> +1 Ask Swinging beef
> from memory he just ditch half his gear cause it all got brett in it so be wary



lol he'd never do that, he just drank everything with brett all through it cuz its awesome!


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## jakub76 (1/6/10)

> Surely it's not only the Brett that survives in bottles. I've managed to grow a fair amount of viable yeast out of one bottle of Orval, I assume it would be a blend of both primary and secondary yeast...wouldn't it?
> Has anyone else had experience culturing Orval yeast - did it smell like baker's yeast?


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## Sammus (1/6/10)

Judging from swinging beef's beers he's done with all orval culture,IMO it tastes like it was fermented with a brett/lacto combination with no normal yeast. brett is a yeast, and may be the white layer of yeast you're looking at. It's possible that orval add the brett at bottling to get the carbonation. If there is any normal yeast in there it wouldnt really matter, the brett and the lacto would over power it and probably outgrow it when you culture it.


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## hazard (1/6/10)

I had my first Orval a few months ago, and being keen to find out what brett was all about I tipped the dregs into 300ml of wort made from pale DME. After about 2 months I got some sediment on the bottom of the jar, I opened it up and smelled like .... Orval!! Don't know where the bread yeast comes from jakub, this smells exactly like the beer, very fruity and very tangy. I'm still planning on my Orval clone, but I understand that primary yeast is Wyeast 3522, ferment with this and when FG is reached, throw in the orval dregs and let Brett do its stuff for a few months. Will do this soon.


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## Sammus (1/6/10)

:icon_drool2: wishing I had some orval right now. beef just lives around the corner, I'm sure itd be totally ok for me to turn up at 11pm asking for free brett beer.


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## Doogiechap (2/6/10)

I added the dregs from a couple of bottles of Orval to a Saison that finished at 1020. 18 months later it had dropped to 1000 and was quite the tangy sour beast. The sourness has dropped off a little now and it is quite nice. I've thrown caution to the wind having it on keg so watch this space to see if the brett invades my gear further. I might have a dedicated funky tap now


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## thelastspud (2/6/10)

RexBanner said:


> +1 Ask Swinging beef
> from memory he just ditch half his gear cause it all got brett in it so be wary






Doogiechap said:


> I've thrown caution to the wind having it on keg so watch this space to see if the brett invades my gear further. I might have a dedicated funky tap now



So is brett invincible? Why cant you kill it like any other yeast?


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## neonmeate (2/6/10)

orval contains WLP510 (primary strain) and a strain of brett bruxellensis added at bottling. no lacto - it would be killed off by all the hops and alcohol.

if you want to make an orval clone there's stacks of stuff on the web. youre better off fermenting the primary with a sacch yeast first then adding the brett later, to limit the brett portion of the fermentation. ive had better results adding brett when ive got the primary down really low first, like 1005 or so. that way the brett remains relatively subtle. make sure you leave the brett in 2ndary for 6 months or so afore bottling though (even though they say orval adds at bottling)! nothing worse than sour beer grenades


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## thelastspud (2/6/10)

Im more wondering why someone had to dump half their gear because it got brett in in? Or why you would need a dedicated funky tap?

Cant you clean brett out of taps and fermentors?


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## Sammus (2/6/10)

not easily. He has dedicated fermenters for brett stuff, even after bleach and iodophor soaks they brett still gets through.

neonmate, where did you hear that wlp510 is the primary? and every orval-dreg fermented beer I've tasted has a big whack of sourness, can that come from brett? I just assumed it was lacto.


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## neonmeate (2/6/10)

Sammus said:


> not easily. He has dedicated fermenters for brett stuff, even after bleach and iodophor soaks they brett still gets through.
> 
> neonmate, where did you hear that wlp510 is the primary? and every orval-dreg fermented beer I've tasted has a big whack of sourness, can that come from brett? I just assumed it was lacto.



bastogne wlp510 is sourced from orval, pretty common knowledge. bastogne is the area of wallonia, south-east Belgium, where Orval is.

sourness does come from brett, given the right strain and conditions, although not as much as lacto and pedio can produce.

have a read of brew like a monk, and search around on the internet for orval clones.

here is a bunch of stuff i've cut and pasted from various websites with some pretty good info (run the dutch stuff through google if you can't work it out!)

By matt_dinges (64.154.121.101) on Monday, March 22, 2004 - 03:20 am: Edit

I got an email from somebody going under "Pearl Street Brewery" requesting my Orval recipe. I emptied my junk mail before I grabbed it out, so hopefully this reaches you. Here are the relavent comments: 

Paul Edwards wrote: 
I've posted this to hbd a few times: 

I visited Orval in 1995, had a wondeful tour. Didn't get any yeast 
samples but did get a printed handout that includes spec's for this 
great beer. 

- ------------------------ 

Original Gravity: 13.4 deg Plato 
Color: 22 EBC 
Bitterness: 32 EBC 

(can somebody translate these last two to SRM and IBU?) 

Malt is French, Dutch and German 

Pale Lager malt 86.5 percent 
Caravienne 13.5 percent 

Kettle Hops are Hallertau and Styrian Goldings. 

Orval is dry hopped with Styrian Goldings 

Chipped pale candi sugar is used in the kettle (no amount given) 
Bottles are primed with liquid invert sugar 

Yeast: 

An ale strain is used in the primary fermenter 

5 different yeasts are added to the secondary (no specific info, except 
that I was told one of them was a Brettanomyces Strain) 

The primary fermenter yeast strain is used for bottling. 
Beer is bottle-conditioned for 6 weeks prior to release to market. 

Drink & cellaring Temperature: 12 to 14 deg C (53 to 57 deg F) 
Sell-by date: 5 years after bottling 


Adam W wrote: 
Now for the definitive answer for those wishing to clone Orval.... 

The WL Bastogne strain was obtained at ORVAL for Chris White by a member of my homebrew club (Long Beach Homebrewers), Don van Valkenburg. It is indeed the primary strain. 

Myself and several other members of the club have successfully cloned the beer. It tastes almost exactly like fresh Orval, at a small fraction of the cost. We used information from the Orval website, the great information from Paul Edwards' HBD posts, and the lambic digest discussion from 1996 to formulate the recipe. 

The key to developing the Orval flavor is to use Brett. Bruxellensis in the secondary. A shampoo-tube of Wyeast 3112 per five gallons works perfectly. As far as I'm concerned, any other S. cerevisiae strains that they may add to secondary are irrelavant and contribute little to the final flavor. It is also important to add fresh primary yeast at bottling. 

I have also cultured the B. bruxellensis and it grows very easily on 2% calcium carbonate plates and slants. If you are adept at yeast culturing, then growing Brett is very easy. The only tricky part is pouring the plates and slants so that the CaCO3 remains in suspension. Be warned though, Brett looks like snot when growing on a plate. It is not very appetizing! 

My recipe for 7 gallon primary fermentation, 6.5 gallons in secondary: 

Grain Bill (adjust for your efficiency): 

9.6 lbs Belgian pilsner 
1.5 lbs Belgian Caravienne 
1 lb table sugar 

O.G. 1.060 

Hops (all pellets): 

2 oz. 5.2% Hallertau for 75 minutes 
1 oz. 4% Styrian Goldings for 20 minutes 
1 oz. 4% Styrian Goldings for 5 minutes 
2 oz. 4% Styrian Goldings dry-hopped 

Yeast: 

1 L starter of WL Bastogne in primary, fermented around 68 degrees F. 
One shampoo tube of Wyeast 3112 added to secondary. 
500 ml high krausen starter of Bastogne yeast added to bottling bucket along with table sugar as priming agent. 

Fermentation schedule: 

Primary for two weeks. 
Secondary for 4 weeks. 
Bottles condition for around 6 weeks for best flavor. 

I recommend getting a vigorous boil going for 90 minutes with the first hop addition coming 15 minutes later. A strong boil will give some carmelization and color develoment. Top up with distilled water if needed. 

In addition, heavy weight bottles are recommended for bottling, as this beer will continue to attenuate in the bottle. I used 750mL champagne bottles for mine, capped with normal bottle caps. 
------------------------------------------------- 

My version was basically Adam's recipe, with some FWHing and some Vienna subbed in for pils(about 10% Vienna). I ended up with OG1.064 and FG1.007. 

Too much alcohol for one thing. If you are wanting to really "clone" this beer, Paul's OG is much better(1.054)...although a lot of stuff I've seen states the OG as 1.052, those numbers are close enough that the difference is rather meaningless, IMO. 

The gravity on a 9month old bottle of Orval I had was 1.004. 

Too much phenol in mine as well, it was fermented in July or Aug in the upper 70s. Keep the temps lower, Bastogne will work in the low 60s at least. 

Too much Brett activity. I transferred my beer at G1.019 or so...Brett ate a lot. To make up for this next time I will mash lower, ~145*F. This should help me. 

Cheers

from hobbybrouwen (same guys who did the rochefort 8 clone)

Recipe Specifics
----------------
Batch Size (LTR): 10.00 Wort Size (LTR): 10.00
Total Grain (kg): 2.09
Anticipated OG: 1.054 Plato: 13.24
Anticipated EBC: 17.6
Anticipated IBU: 33.3
Brewhouse Efficiency: 82 %
Wort Boil Time: 90 Minutes
Grain/Extract/Sugar
% Amount Name EBC
-----------------------------------------------
42.6 0.89 kg. Pilsener 4
42.6 0.89 kg. Pale Ale Malt (2 Row) 4
6.4 0.13 kg. CaraVienne Malt 43
8.5 0.18 kg. Crystal 55L 108
Hops
Amount Name Form Alpha IBU Boil Time
----------------------------------------------------------------
9.00 g. Hallertau Hersbrucker Pellet 4.75 7.0 30 min.
15.00 g. Styrian Goldings Pellet 5.25 26.3 70 min.
18.00 g. Styrian Goldings Pellet 5.25 0.0 Dry Hop
Mash Schedule
-------------
Temp : 60 Time: 30
Temp : 70 Time: 30
Temp : 78 Time: 5
De kleur komt dan uit op zo'n 18 EBC.
Groeten,
A3

another guy on hobbybrouwen says:
Gisteren bij Orval op bezoek geweest (ook even bij het brouwerijmuzeum van Martens (Zeker eens naar toe gaan!!!)). Samen met Jacques geprobeerd duidelijkheid te krijgen in het recept. Ik heb wel een paar aantekeningen gemaakt en deze met Jacques gedeeld. Hij zal mijn reactie hier wel verder aanvullen.
Orval wordt gemaakt van 3 moutsoorten:
87% pilsmout en
13% caramelmout (waarschijnlijk Munich en Vienna)
brokken witte kandij (ja, het is echt zo)
Styrian Goldings en Hallentau.
De hop wordt als First Wort Hopping, tijdens het koken (extract) en als drooghopping toegevoegd, waarvan 32 kg Styrian op 10.000 liter 3 weken wordt gedrooghopt.
Single-fusion maischen op (ik meen 68 graden) voor 60 of 90 minuten (Jacques?).
Gistingstemperatuur: 15 graden. Ook de lagering en hergisting op fles is onder die temperatuur.
IK HEB MIJN EERSTE POGING GEBROUWEN!
Het was wel even wennen om zo lang 68 graden aan te houden. Met de kou moest ik redelijk vaak bijstoken om toch bij die 68 te bijven. 
Wel wat moeilijkheden met de ingredinten. De spullen die ik kreeg waren Vienna en Munich. Da's nog geen Caravienna en Caramunich. Nu had ik nog genoeg Caramunich, dus ben met Promash aan de gang gegaan om het recept iets aan te passen aan wat ik nog wel had liggen. Daardoor heb ik meer caramunich gebruikt (520 gram, toen was het op) en heb ik aangevuld met 100 gram caramout (50 EBC). Volgens Promash ontstond zo een SG van zo'n 1054 en een EBC van 20. Nog net te weinig, maar ik doe het er maar mee. Die 2 punten met de onnauwkeurighied van promash (wat betreft kleur) vind ik geen enkel probleem.
Het brouwen ging verder prima. Het gist is toegevoegd en op dit moment is er voortdurend een overdruk, zonder dat het waterslot blubt. Ik moet dus nog wachten tot alles aan de praat gaat.
Het recept, zoals ik hem heb gevolgd:
20 liter, rendement 60%
4.07 kg Pilsmout 3 EBC (87%)
0.52 kg. Caramunich 120 EBC ( 
0.10 kg. Ambermout 50 EBC (
0.50 kg. witte kandij
7 gr. Hallentau Herzbrucker 3% (FWH)
14 gr. Styrian Goldings 4.7%, pellets (FWH)
12 gr. Hallentau Herzbrucker 3% (45 minuten)
24 gr. Styrian Goldings 4.7% (45 minuten)
Kooktijd 90 minuten
Maischen op 68 graden voor 120 minuten met 16.4 liter maischwater.
Gespoeld met 14.6 liter water op 80 graden
SG = 1058
Ik ben dus iets te hoog uitgekomen. Dat komt omdat ik net teveel heb ingedampt tijdens het koken. Daardoor heb ik 19 liter over ipv 20 liter.
Ben benieuwd wat het nu verder gaat doen.
Edwin


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## Howlingdog (3/6/10)

Bit late with this but Wyeast site 

http://www.wyeastlab.com/pc2q2009.cfm

quote
"Wyeast 3789-PC Trappist Blend
Beer Styles: Belgian Specialty Ale, Belgian Pale Ale, Flanders Red, Oud Bruin 
Profile: A unique blend of Belgian Saccharomyces and Brettanomyces for emulating Trappist style beer from the Florenville region in Belgium. Phenolics, mild fruitiness and complex spicy notes develop with increased fermentation temperatures. Subdued but classic Brett character. 

Alc. Tolerance 12% ABV 
Flocculation medium 
Attenuation 75-80%
Temperature Range 68-85F (18-30C)"

Address for Orval;

Abbaye d'Orval, 6823 Florenville

HD


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## john_8Lg (20/3/20)

Excuse my necro-posting but I made 2 beers from the same wort to duplicate Orval. In one I used a culture stepped up from two Orval bottles ( It made 5 litres of beer which tasted like a real Orval ). And for the other I used the Wyeast Trappist Blend ( 20 litres tasted ok but nothing remotely like Orval ).


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