Jekyll and Hyde

This article originally appeared in the January/February 2022 issue of Zymurgy Magazine

By Dustin S. Henry

Brewing great beer is a dance between malt, hops, and yeast. When I create a recipe, I always try to picture (or mentally taste) the final product in my head. Too few hops, too much grain, or too characterful a yeast can negatively affect the beer. Conversely, all of these can be positive if that is what you’re working toward.

But what happens when you come across a new yeast strain you have not used or tasted before? What happens when you come across, say, a relatively new yeast to Western brewing straight out of a Lithuanian farmhouse? What happens when the stated fermentation temperature range is absurdly high and it claims to impart myriad interesting flavors? Well, my inner beer adventurer comes out to explore.

The yeast in question is Omega’s Jovaru yeast, a Lithuanian strain that is noted for its Belgian characteristics. I could have brewed a beer with it, but I decided to do a split batch with it to see what it was capable of. What I found was interesting, and the results were not entirely…