Looking for suggestions on a British yeast

I'm looking at adding a strain of english yeast to my library for pales, porters, and ipas. I usually buy wyeast because the LHBS sells it. Any suggestions and/or experiences would be great.

cheers
J

1098 is good if you like fruity, 1028 if you like bready. 1098 ferments like a banchee

I'm a huge fan of 1968 - little bit of fruitness, malt and hops shine and it finishes REALLY clealrly.

I brewed British Pale Ale WLP005 last weekend and it went from 1.053 to 1.018 in a few days. I was out of the house and when I came back on Wednesday night I had no krausen so I guess it went thru most fermentation in 4 days.

I cant comment on the taste since I am still planning to keep it going for another 2 weeks (3 week rule).

phished880 said:

I'm looking at adding a strain of english yeast to my library for pales, porters, and ipas. I usually buy wyeast because the LHBS sells it. Any suggestions and/or experiences would be great.

cheers
J

Click to expand...

I am a Liquid Yeast fan, but I recently used S-04 and loved the results. Great settling and works very well for malty and higher gravity ales. I washed the yeast after use and have four pints in the fridge.

I have used WLP002 English Ale (Wyeast 1968 London ESB), WLP007 Dry English (Wyeast 1098 Whitbread - dry), and S-04.

I am loving WLP007 right now. I am basically using it for all of my English beers.

You can't beat Notty for cost and ease of use.

+1 on 1968. It takes the malt flavors of your grain and super-intensifies them. I love it. You can still make some nice hoppy beer with this strain as well, but consider adding a little more hops than you might with 1056. That goes for bitterness as well as flavor/aroma. The high flocculation (another reason I love this yeast) will leave slightly more residual sweetness (also delicious to me) so an extra 5-8 IBUs will help there, and because of the intense malt, some extra hop flavor/aroma will balance everything.

Brocster said:

I am a Liquid Yeast fan, but I recently used S-04 and loved the results. Great settling and works very well for malty and higher gravity ales. I washed the yeast after use and have four pints in the fridge.

Click to expand...

+1 on S-04. I like liquid yeast as well, but it's easy to just have a half dozen packets of S-04 and S-05 (American style) sitting ready to go and they work for most things I brew. Stouts, pale ales, ipas, brown ale, etc.

I save the liquid yeast for when I want to do something Belgian or something like that. Or when I just wanna use Pacman.

If I were you I'd just pick one and try it. Everyone's taste preferences
and styles of beer they use them in are so different it's hard to
recommend a specific one. FWIW, I think 1968 is too bready for
light ales, it works well in darker beers. I use 1318 most of the time.

Ray

rayg said:

I use 1318 most of the time.

Click to expand...

I like this yeast too. Worked out very well in a mild that I made last year.

I have been searching for the perfect "English" yeast for about three years now and I have come to a personal consensus:

- Whitbread (1098/s04) is merely 'ok' tasting and good for budget brews, but there are always better choices available.
- WY1028 is great in pale ales, amber ales, northern browns, bitters, english IPA or any beer that you want dry and crisp, but still have flavor.
- WY1968 is nearly the perfect mix of malty and subtle esters. Brilliantly clear.
- WY1275 is balanced, complex - competition yeast. House favorite.
- WY1187 (Ringwood) Totally underused. Produces flavorful, clean beer when fermented properly. Somewhat temperamental, but is very versatile. Love it.
- WY1084 (Irish Ale) Meh. Not really a fan. Would use Notty over this in Dry Stout.

Would love to try Thames Valley II, I've heard good things about that one.

I have used both Nottingham and S-04 and prefer Nottingham. It attenuates well to produce dry beer and really flocs well too. My stouts and IPAs are my best beers by far and even better when I use Notty.

use nottingham for porters ales and stouts. i lilke s-04 for ipa's.

thank you everyone for all the great input

IMO, nottingham ale yeast is one of the best yeast strains available. If you learn how to use this yeast properly, the sky is the limit. I find it very similar to Rogue Pacman...just a little more sensitive to temperature extremes.

If I was going to make an english style IPA, brown ale, pale ale, porter or stout.......notty would get the call.

The recall has given nottingham a bad name recently, but I find it to an amazingly clean maltose eater.

Vote for 1099 here.

Recently cultured up some ringwood so I'll be seeing how that goes. I also have a young's special london ale clone on the cards so I'll be ordering the london ale III.

My experience of wyeast so far is that it's hard to be disappointed if you brew within a vague sense of style. I've even used the irish ale yeast in a porter with good results.

I've used White Labs WLP023 Burton Ale in a couple of bitters recently and love it. It's got a good amount of fruit character in it but goes fantastically well with British type hops like EKGs, Styrian Goldings, Challenger and Northdown. Despited what it says, both beers were 76% attenuated but retained some malty sweetness even though the numbers look like it'd be pretty dry.

I've used Wyeast 1028 for a couple of darker beers lately too and loved it. Dry Stout came out fantastic. Malt's accentuated with maybe some mineral touch to it and minimal esters. Also did a RIS which came out fantastic. Don't see huge fruit there either but the malt character is really nice.

I've only done a Dark Mild with Wyeast 1968. It also came out great but I can't really say a helluva lot. The malt dominates.

Anyway, for me, at this point, I think for the bitters I like the White Labs WLP023 Burton Ale yeast the best. Was just drinking the ESB I made with this last night, with Challenger and Northdown hops and dry hops and was really loving the mix of fruit from the yeast, bread from the malt and earthy, spicy character from the hops.

+1 on WLP023 Burton Ale for bitters. Love it.

for darker beers I feel the fruityness gets in the way, and I much prefer WLP013 London Ale, WLP037 Yorkshire Square, or WLP005 ringwood for everything from brown-stout.