Wyeast 1318..... Omg!!!!

Holy mother of jesus...

I had no idea how vigorous a yeast could be.
Made an 800ml starter 3 days ago and piched into 1.074 wort less than 24 hrs ago and its going mad, so mad that im rigging a blowoff as I type.
I read this yeast is a true top cropper and can be mad at time, needless to say im going to skim this **** and save for my next brew.
Cant wait to see how this turns out.
Anybody had good results with this yeast, and how was your fermentation?

Cheers
Matt

I am using it in a mild right now. It didn't seem very vigorous to me. But it is in a mild with an og of 1.038 and I held it at 64*f for most of active fermentation. I made a starter as well and used a blow off, but never had much more than 4 inches of krausen. I plan on putting a big Barleywine on the cake, though, so I imagine that will blow off like crazy. The general consensus seems to be that the krausen hangs around forever and that it will blow off a fair amount.

Ok so an update.

Rigged a blowoff last night in the hope that it would help with the mess being produced.
Got up this morning and my fermenter lid is all distorted but the foam no longer came out into the room, but it did floe through the blowoff and into the bottle with sterilised solution in.
the beer smells fantastic though.
this stuff is nuts.

Cheers

Lovely yeast. Good for beers where you want a little bit more malty touch to it. I've used for a lot of beers. Nice in Ambers, IMHO.

I'm using 1318 in a mild right now. Took a gravity sample tonight at it was delicious. It's got just the right amount of malty sweetness. It's been in primary for nearly 2 weeks and the krausen is still hanging around.

Actually, interestingly enough, I'm using this yeast on a porter right now and had the krausen subside after 2 days at 68 degrees. Pretty fast fermentation this time.

Mine has now been in primary for 4 days and its still going pretty crazy.
Got foam coming through the blow off still.
Im tempted to scoop some yeast as I still have a huge yeast head on top.
Im brewing a stout at weekend so may use some of this for that brew.

1318 is a cracking yeast: it ends up a tad sweeter than I like in most worts, but it's malty, soft and the ester profile is very good, even when fermented slightly warm. It's also an excellent candidate for open fermentation, if you are into that sort of thing.

You usually want to harvest the second skim, the first skim being full of hop resins and assorted crap protein, while the third skim (just before final attenuation) is full of tired cells. After 4 days, it might be a little too late to harvest, but if it is still chugging along...

Im still pretty new to a lot of things in brewing hence leaving it to long to harvest lol.
Im not sure about the open fermentation thingy either, im finding this site and all the members very helpful, but I think for now I will stick to basics and progress onto new ventures when im confident enough.
I cant wait to see how this turns out especially because the brew it went into was just made up on the spot with what I had.

Thanks guys and cheers

A question I do have about skimming yeast is, even if im not plannimg to harvest should I skim it off anyway or just wait for it to fall out?

Cheers

MattGuk said:

A question I do have about skimming yeast is, even if im not plannimg to harvest should I skim it off anyway or just wait for it to fall out?

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leave it there and wait for it to fall back into the beer (and settle at the bottom). no need to remove it. if anything, you'd be creating another opportunity for infection.

Love this yeast, one of my go to's for English beers.

To answer your last question, if you're not harvesting it, just leave it like SweetCell said, there's no need to mess with it. It'll sit up on the top longer than alot of yeasts, but the wait is worth it for sure.

This is my next yeast that I'll harvest the cake and use for successive beers on my quest to calm my obsession with British ales.... I've done the 1469, now doing wlp002, and 1318 is up next.

MattGuk said:

A question I do have about skimming yeast is, even if im not plannimg to harvest should I skim it off anyway or just wait for it to fall out?

Cheers

Click to expand...

You don't skim, BUT...

If you are doing an open fermentation, either rack from under the krausen to another closed and sanitized container or skim and close the container. I usually use buckets, so I get rid of the last skim and close the lid if I'm doing an open fermentation. I don't let it fall into the beer because there is all kind of assorted crap in it, mostly dust particles. There's a BrewingTV episode where they show someone using a fish gutter as an oipen fermntation vessel and he, imho, racks way too late from it since he waits until the krausen has fallen.

You don't need skim/transfer if you use the standard airlock + carboy/bucket method since there's no way for dust to get on the krausen. You might want to rack from underneath the krausen anyway if you want to package since I've had ferments with 1318 which still had a cheesy, hard cap on them after three weeks.