To help brewers choose the best yeast for their beers, we started a program called Make Your Choice (the MYC Program) a few years ago. The aim of the program is to guide and inform our customers about the promises and mainly the flavor expression of our yeasts. It all began with Baseline Flavor & Aromas, a sensory study conducted in a standard condition that mapped the position and representations of all of our beer yeast according to three important fermentation flavor profiles: their fruity, spicy or neutral characters. The second step of the MYC Program consisted of a deeper characterization of each yeast under different fermentation conditions.
MYC

SafAle BE-256 was the second yeast selected for the second step of the program. With broader technical and organoleptic information, we provide to brewers everything they need to know about the SafAle™ BE-256 fermentation behaviour and its detailed sensory expression. A very refined information to support the best and the right choice for their fermentation. As you can you see on the map above, this yeast relates to the fruity side, it’s why our SafAle™ BE-256 is well known to ferment a diversity of Belgian type beers such as abbey style characterised for its fruitiness. Considering the importance of the fruitiness character for brewers, we wanted to evaluate how process parameters (such as wort density, fermentation temperature and pitching rate) could affect the fruity flavor profile produced by this strain.

From the various studied conditions, we obtained a matrix that help us to characterize what happens when we change a specific variable. Our study demonstrated that some parameters have more impact on the fermentation behaviour and flavor expression than others. Some important conclusions must be taken into consideration when using SafAle™ BE-256: e.g. the higher fermentation temperature, the shorter the fermentation time and the diacetyl level.

But, above all, we have demonstrated that the density of the wort is the parameter with the biggest impact on the final beer.  A higher density of wort will release more fusel alcohols (sensory alcohols and warmth perception in mouth), more esters (fruity perception especially of banana with the Isoamyl Acetate) and let more residual sugars in the beer (sweetness perception and beer body).

See below six important conditions we have selected to demonstrate the main conclusions:

Conditions SafAle™ BE-256
Sensory SafAle™ BE-256

Key conclusions

Finally, this data confirmed that SafAle™ BE-256 is one of our best strain to brew strong and flavor rich Belgian Ales. Indeed, it always provides fruity flavors over many different fermentation conditions. It’s especially true at higher densities and high fermentation temperatures.

Key conclusions SafAle™ BE-256

Discover more about SafAle™ BE-256 and all our others strains on the Fermentis App (available on App Store and Android) and on our website by clicking here!