Kveik for the Modern Brewer

Burnt City’s Ben Saller explains the dynamism of kveik.

Ben Saller, head brewer and cofounder of Burnt City Brewing in Chicago, has used kveik to ferment a range of styles. Here he explains its flexibility, while also keeping its traditional origins firmly in mind.

I WAS INTRODUCED TO KVEIK—OR

yeast derived from traditional Norwegian farmhouse breweries—by Lance Shaner of Omega Yeast Labs. Kveik has qualities that immediately set it apart from the various ale and lager yeasts to which American craft brewers are accustomed. It ferments very rapidly at high temperatures without giving off undesirable phenolics or other flavors we would normally associate with hot fermentations. Relatively small pitches of kveik can ferment fairly big beers in 48 hours. These characteristics make it convenient for brewers to use.

However, many of us are drawn to kveik for other reasons. Burnt City’s brewing team became infatuated with kveik because it lends a balance of flavors to beer unlike any other yeasts we’ve encountered. Voss kveik adds a low-key citrus-pith note, while Hornindal gives more tropical-pineapple character. That said, both are clean enough that we’ve brewed everything from simple saison-type beers to double hazy IPAS and imperial stouts with these yeasts. Getting that extra little bit of fruitiness into hoppy beers—while maintaining an otherwise clean fermentation character—is something we’ve had a lot of fun with.

It doesn’t hurt that Voss- and Hornindal-fermented IPAS, with an active-ferment dry hop, end up being nice and hazy. We do typically lower our tank temperature for a second dry hop once fermentation has subsided to minimize harsher vegetal flavors.

It’s worth pointing out that one potential drawback of using kveik for hazy IPAS is that some of the more popular strains are more attenuative than other yeasts commonly used for this style; thus, they can cause beers to finish on the dry side. I personally find this enjoyable, but it’s not necessarily what customers might expect.

In any discussion about the basics of kveik, it’s important to give credit to the Norwegian farmhouse brewers who have will

Voss kveik adds a low-key citrus-pith note, while Hornindal gives more tropical-pineapple character. That said, both are clean enough that we’ve brewed everything from simple saison-type beers to double hazy IPAS and imperial stouts with these yeasts.

ingly shared these wonderful yeasts with the world. Lars Marius Garshol—who was kind enough to fly to Chicago to give a talk when we hosted Kveik Fest last year—has been hugely instrumental in cataloguing farmhouse yeasts in Norway and many other locales, as well as in documenting farmhouse-brewing techniques that fly in the face of many principles that American craft brewers previously held to be fundamental. We collaborated with Lars to brew a raw ale based on a recipe from Petter Øvrebust in Stordal, Norway. We used juniper branches in the mash, a simple grain bill featuring wonderful base malt from Sugar Creek Malt Company (Boone County, Indiana), a hop tea boiled in a separate vessel (since we didn’t boil our wort), and the Framgarden kveik strain collected from Petter’s brewery.

The result was delicious, and while Lars said it only somewhat resembled the beer that inspired it, the process was fascinating, and it helped give perspective to what we’re doing as brewers in our weird and wild but small 21st-century bubble.

I have a backlog of kveiks that I’d like to experiment with.

I’ve gotten distracted by various projects, such as testing other experimental yeasts and figuring out how to make a nice, clean, hard-soda base. However, before long, I’d like to start new mixed-fermentation projects using kveik in conjunction with Brettanomyces and lactic-acid bacteria. Funky saisons have always been some of my favorite beers, and I love using kveik in place of traditional saison yeasts. Voss kveik, for example, attenuates less than Belgian saison strains, leaving more sugars for Brett and Lacto to chew on, while also imbuing the beer with the lemony character I mentioned earlier.

Organizing Kveik Fest last year was one of my proudest accomplishments, and it breaks my heart that we can’t do it again this year. We’ll see what the future holds, and I can’t wait to find opportunities to team up with more fellow brewers to see what we can do with kveik.