BREWING KVEIK-LY

Making homebrew quickly with Kveik

Abstract
Kveik is a group of Norwegian farmhouse ale yeast that provides clean
and fruity ferment in as little as two or three days! This booklet is all about
how to take advantage of those and other aspects of this amazing yeast

Five Tone Brewing

fivetonebeer@gmail.com

2019-Jan-23
Version 0.5
Brewing Kveik-ly

Brewing Kveik-ly
Making homebrew quickly with Kveik

Contents
Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................. 1
Advice for those new to brewing ........................................................................................... 2
What is Kveik.................................................................................................................................. 2
Getting acquainted with Kveik............................................................................................... 2
Using starters / mini-batches ................................................................................................ 2
Pitching rates ......................................................................................................................... 3
Storing slurry............................................................................................................................ 3
Dehydrating ........................................................................................................................... 3
Strains and styles ....................................................................................................................... 3
Kveik and temperature ............................................................................................................ 4
Brewing quickly with Kveik........................................................................................................... 4
Brewing quickly and bottling................................................................................................... 5
Brewing quickly with keg gear ................................................................................................ 5
Brewing quickly with natural carbonation ............................................................................ 5
A sample recipe – Pale Ale ..................................................................................................... 6
Brewing sour beers: co-pitching ............................................................................................. 6
Other topics ................................................................................................................................... 7
Simonaitis.................................................................................................................................... 7
Resources....................................................................................................................................... 7

Acknowledgements
Since this is a booklet about Kveik it’s best to start by thanking Lars Garshol who’s been
sharing stories and information about Kveik and ultimately is the source of most of what
we know about it. And of course, all the brewers who preserved their strains and
methods – enjoying their product the entire time, I’m sure.

Most (if not all) of the ideas below came from experiments and discussion with fellow
homebrewers. Our local club (the Members of Barleyment) held a Kveik competition
last year and we all learned a lot from it. I’m grateful to be part of the club; and
grateful for the punny title!

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We got our hands on Kveik through Richard Preiss (at Escarpment Labs) and through
some friendly homebrewers at Milk the Funk; thank you!

I should also point out that books from classic authors like Papazian, Palmer, and
Mosher have been invaluable to me. As well as blogs/online material from Low Oxygen
Brewing and Scott Janish.

Advice for those new to brewing

Go to your local homebrew shop or online and get a small extract kit. Most of these kits
come with good instructions that focus on the important details when starting out. For
the moment, forget about Kveik, and use the yeast provided with your kit. This slower
pace will give you a chance to notice lots of details about the process and what works
for you.

Grab one of the many great books out there about how to brew beer. Randy Mosher,
Charlie Papazian, John Palmer, and many others have written good material and I
recommend you grab a copy of one of those. They each have different styles and
personalities, pick one that seems right for you.

What is Kveik
Kveik is a group of Norwegian farmhouse ale yeast that ferments cleanly in as little as 2-
3 days! There is a tonne more information at Larsblog1 but the things I want to focus on
are:

 they can be fermented at high temperatures (25-35°C)

 they ferment quickly (2-5) days
 they have a fruity ester profile without phenolics
 they can be reused easily

Getting started with kveik

In general, kveik has a fruity profile, but each one has its own characteristics. Its worth
spending some time to become familiar with them.

Using starters / mini-batches

Once you’ve gotten your hands on some kveik the first thing you should really do is
make a starter. While it’s perfectly alright to pitch it into some wort and make some
beer, you might as well create a starter so that you can prove the yeast is viable, you
can save some for later, and you can use the starter beer for some experiments. The
starter beer will give you a sense of what kind of aromas and flavours you’ll get, and
you can dry hop the “beer” in little mason jars to get a feel for what hop/Kveik
combinations appeal to you.

1 http://www.garshol.priv.no/blog/

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Pitching rates
Believe it or not, “A good rule of thumb is a teaspoon of
slurry for 25 liters of wort”2. This will produce a lot of the
kveik (ester) character. I prefer using about 250 ml of
starter per 10L. But you’ll figure out after a few batches
what pitching rate provides the flavor profile you’re
after.

Storing slurry
I like to keep 250 ml or 500 ml mason jars ready to go in Figure 1Kveik in the freezer!
the fridge. These can be pitched directly if need be. If
these jars have been in my fridge for a while or I’m running low on space, I’ll transfer
them into 50 ml vials. When ever I run out I’ll make a starter from dehydrate flakes stored
in my freezer.

Dehydrating
Dehydrating can provide a lot of dried
yeast for future batches. The process itself
is quite simple:

1. Make a large starter, or use the

yeast cake from a good healthy
ferment, and transfer into one or
several (wide mouth) mason jars
2. Place in the fridge and allow the
yeast to flocculate
3. Pour off the starter wort (use it for
some dry hop experiments!)
4. Use a spatula to spread the yeast
and trub onto some parchment
paper
5. Proceed to dehydrate in the oven
or in a dehydrate somewhere
between 30°C to 40°C
6. Once dry store in a mason jar in Figure 2 the Kveik dehydration process

the freezer

Strains and styles

Here are some notes on the ones that I’ve managed to play around with:

2Garshol, Lars. “How to use kveik,” Larsblog (blog), 2018-06-09,

http://www.garshol.priv.no/blog/393.html

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Kveik Strain Flavor Profile Recommended Styles Attenuation

Hornindal Red apple, tropical Brown Ales, English styles, ~70-75%
fruit, caramel general us
Ebbegarden Pineapple, mango, APA, IPA, sours, general use ~75-80%
guava
Voss Orange, some spice Blonde Ale, APA, Winter Ale ~75-80%
Granvin Like Voss but milder Blonde Ales, “clean” beers ~70-75%
Figure 3 Kveik flavor, styles, and attenuation

Kveik and temperature

The main reason I started looking into Kveik is because I’d
heard that it thrived at high temperatures without creating
fusel alcohols, phenolic esters (like a Saison yeast), or banana
flavors. Most of them great tasting beer at warmer than room
temp (21C) up to around 30C. Each strain has a specific
“best” temp, but all of them seem to work well in the 28C-30C
range.

So, if you’re anything like me, my room temperature is 23C;

which is fine for Kveik. But to provide optimal temperatures
you may want to use a heat source:

 temp controller plus heat-belt or heat lamp

 a floor heater directed at the fermentor
 aquarium heater (or sous-vide unit) plus water bath
 ferment in a temp controlled vessel
Figure 4 Fermenting in a keg
I ferment in kegs, so prefer using a heat-wrap and a temp
controller.

Brewing quickly with Kveik

Kveik will ferment your beer in 2-5 days depending on temperature, nutrients, and
gravity. A good safe strategy is:

 3 days in a fermentor at 28-30C

 1 more day with the heat off (to encourage flocculation)
 Verify final gravity and then package (bottle or keg)

Once you get more familiar with how quickly things work you can work on shortening
this process

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Brewing quickly and bottling

Bottling works well, and carbonation is achieved
quickly.

I recently made an American Blonde ale with Simcoe

where I did the following:

1. pitched two dried Voss flakes (about the size of

quarters) at 30°C into a 3L mini-batch
2. dry-hopped after 24 hours (I should have co-
pitched the yeast and dry-hops)
3. bottled after a total of 4 days
4. waited 3 days to carbonate (at 23°C) Figure 5 Grain-to-glass via bottle
5. beer was at it’s prime after one week in the
fridge

One week after brewing I was enjoying this tasty beverage. It should be noted, that of
course this beer was better after about a week of “conditioning” in the fridge.

Brewing quickly with keg gear

Kegging is a bit simpler in some ways. After verifying final gravity, you can use a gravity
transfer to a keg and then force carbonate/condition in your kegerator or keezer.

Brewing quickly with natural carbonation

Putting everything together and taking advantage of
natural carbonation allows us to brew incredibly quickly.
Once you’ve done a few batches with Kveik, you’ll
probably figure out a timeframe when most of the
fermentation is complete in your setup (with 1° Plato or 5
gravity points left). For me that ends up being 24-36 hours.
To take advantage of that here’s what I like to do
(borrowing some ideas from Low Oxygen Brewing3):

1. Use a keg or a fermentor that can handle pressure,

and get your heating equipment setup
2. Once the wort is at the desired temperature pitch a
healthy starter into the wort
3. Sealed the kegs, hook up a jumper from the gas-in Figure 6 Fermenting in kegs
post of the fermentor to the beverage-out post of
the receiving keg (so that the CO2 is fed into the bottom).
4. And then hook up a blow-off tube from the gas-in post of the receiving keg to jar
of water plus a small amount of alcohol or sanitizer

3 http://www.lowoxygenbrewing.com/

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5. Give the yeast 24-36 hours to complete most of the

fermentation – CAUTION: please take samples and
experiment on your own to find the amount of time
that works for you
6. Disconnect the blow-off tube from the serving keg
7. Using a spunding-valve to monitor the pressure of
the serving keg
8. After a day or two turn off the heat to encourage
flocculation
9. And then pressure transfer to your serving keg

Further details and discussion see our Five Tone Brewing

page about low oxygen brewing4

Since this process is so fast, you should seriously consider

doing no-chill. You can make a starter using dehydrated
flakes with real wort while the main volume of wort safely
Figure 7 Pressure transfer to
chills in your fermentor!5 For a 10L to 20L batch this will only
serving keg
set you back 12-18 hours; if you brew on Sunday, you’ll still
be able to serve beer Friday night.

A sample recipe – Pale Ale

If you think of the typical flavors that Kveik produces: citrus, tropical fruit, in some cases
a bit of caramel, these are flavors that work particularly well in an American Pale Ales.

Here’s a sample “recipe” for a 10L batch. I used crowd-favorite Citra, but almost any
new fruity/herbal/piney/spicy hop will work well. Use recipe software and the ratios
below to target an OG of about 1.050. Assume about 77-78% attenuation (or use the
chart above for your specific yeast)

 78-88% 2-row (or other base malt)

 5-10% Vienna (or light Munich)
 5-10% Flaked Wheat (and/or Oats)
 2% Caramalt/Crystal 40L (or other accent: Honey, Melanoidin, Biscuit …)
 20 IBU of Citra (bittering)*
 15 IBU of Citra for a 5 min*
 (Optional) 3-5 g/L of Citra as a co-pitched “dry-hop” when the yeast is added
* These hops should be removed or left behind 5 mins after flameout depending on your chilling approach

Brewing sour beers: co-pitching

Kveik happens to love the same ideal temperature range for L. Plantarum. This makes
co-pitching Kveik and Lacto bacteria very attractive. There is are a lot of details about
lacto ferments on the Milk the Funk Wiki that are a bit out of scope here. Suffice it to

4https://www.fivetonebrewing.com/wiki/doku.php?id=low_oxygen_brewing
5This idea came from Steve Schultz from our local club; it blew my mind! I’ve been using the
technique ever since

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say, that cop-pitching Ebbegarden (or another Kveik) and L Plantarum at 28-30°C will
get you to a nice pH and a good ferment very quickly.

Other topics
Simonaitis
Simonaitis is a related yeast that loves high temperatures, but unlike Kveik it produces
some phenols (pepper). It will give somewhere between 75-80% attenuation but unlike
a Saison yeast it doesn’t have the STA1 gene, so it is more like a Belgian/Trappist ale
yeast.

I’ve tried this yeast in a Saison recipe and it was good, but I suspect it would be better if
it was used in a Trappist/Abbey Single … so more like a German Pils with a Farmhouse
Ale yeast. It’ll be my next experiment.

Resources
Five Tone Brewing https://fivetonebrewing.com/

Larsblog http://www.garshol.priv.no/blog/

Milk the Funk Wiki http://www.milkthefunk.com/wiki/Kveik

Escarpment Labs (strains) https://www.escarpmentlabs.com/strains

Low Oxygen Brewing http://www.lowoxygenbrewing.com/