Kveik Lager

“Lager yeast at body temperature” it’s very hard to believe it. But hope dying last so I had to try it. I don’t have any experience with kveik yeast, the information on producer website is terse and I can’t find any opinion on homebrew forum. I wasn’t sure should I keep it on lower temperature or middle for this strain. So this brew is more experimental than casual brewing and unless I get perfect lager I can’t give any objective opinion like say that this yeast doesn’t work for lagers. I used my competition winning recipe grain base (Pilsner malt + Carapils) for this beer and as I didn’t know what profile I can expect I didn’t worry too much for hopping and I used Czech hops Saaz and Sladek. So let’s see how it works…

I have a problem with this beer. When I was racking to secondary fermentation, beer seems to be perfectly clean and clear with a nice hop aroma. I had to leave it for almost 3 weeks due to my holidays. When I was bottling, I found some esters like a red apple aroma (not acetaldehyde) and I suspect ethyl hexanoate in high concentration. Now this aroma disappeared, but it looks like all aroma disappeared too. I can not find aroma hops or anything else except some esters, not similar to ale yeast character, which I can not identify. No tone of sulfur, like in german lagers or a bit of diacetyl like in bohemian pilsners.  I cannot say what is wrong but something is. Beer is not bad. But I fell that something missing. It does not smell like oxidized beer but a long time on secondary fermentation could be a reason.  I will definitely try again this yeast with different hops composition and without secondary fermentation.