Your fav yeast for British pale ale

I know that I am spreading my inquiries wide across a number of sections of the forum, but thought I give this section a try. Many of you have chimed in and have been extremely helpful with my thread in the recipes section.

My question for the yeasty part of your brain is which yeast do you swear by for a British pale ale, and more importantly, why? Have you tried a number of different ones and always go back to your old standard, or do you chop and change depending on your grist bill and hop schedule?

Any opinions and comments will be appreciated. I will provide any feedback as I try out some different yeasts. FYI: I can get Wyeast and Danstar at my LHBS; no WL or Safale unfortunately, but would try and source them if they are mandatory for a try.

Thanks, HBTers. I'm always impressed with the collective knowledge and willingness to help in this forum.

WLP023 Burton - In my opinion, the best yeast for british beers, its fruitiness complements the beer so well. Once you try it, you'll wonder why you waited so long.

edit: just reread your post, although I've never tried it, Wyeast 1275 Thames Valley ale might also be the same. Mrmalty lists those 2 as coming from the same source, although I am sure they have diverged some in the intervening years.

Thames Valley is a workhorse strain - with lots of wonderful English character. It really accentuates the malt and there's a soft complimentary fruitiness.

Which strain to choose depends on what you want out of it. Each English ale strain is fairly unique, and each interacts with other ingredients - grist and hops - in a different way.

Me, I like Ringwood, though I might very well be the only brewer on HBT who does! It's a challenging yeast to manage, but if you can manage it it's completely unique. In fact, if you prefer Yorkshire ales, it's about the only widely-available yeast that will give the crucial characteristics thereof.

Bob

WLP "British ale" is a new favorite of mine. The taste is extremely "british".
I also like WLP London Ale because of the more complex flavors.

Thames Valley had a strange odor-like off-flavour I didn't like.

NQ3X said:

Me, I like Ringwood, though I might very well be the only brewer on HBT who does! It's a challenging yeast to manage, but if you can manage it it's completely unique. In fact, if you prefer Yorkshire ales, it's about the only widely-available yeast that will give the crucial characteristics thereof.

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I like Ringwood as well! I've a series of bitters planned for Ringwood, as a matter of fact.

I still like good old Wyeast 1968 -- superfloc yeast strain!

Very consistent yeast strain and great if you keg.

NQ3X said:

Me, I like Ringwood, though I might very well be the only brewer on HBT who does! It's a challenging yeast to manage, but if you can manage it it's completely unique.

Bob

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I read somewhere that if you manage it properly you never need to buy yeast again. There's a brewpub in toronto that uses it and they've been repitching it for over five years. The Ringwood brewery has been repitching it for longer 20+ I think.

Yorkshire ales are lovely, you just have to ask them to take the sparkler off when they serve.

I'm researching for a switch to open fermentation.

Several of the breweries in which I worked professionally were Ringwood breweries. I learned a lot about it during that time.

But I can't say as I'd repitch it out beyond a dozen generations without reculturing. In my experience, after ten to twelve generations weird things start happening in terms of flocculation and ester development. Most breweries who report using the same yeast for decades have sophisticated laboratories which constantly monitor the house strain. It's not so simple as just repitching, I'm afraid.

Open fermentation isn't the bugbear many people think. It requires meticulous attention to cleanliness and sanitation, as well as attention to the state of the ferment. Unlike carboys, it's not a "pitch and wait two weeks" method of fermentation; once the krauesen falls, you really need to get it sealed away.

Ringwood, further, doesn't require open fermentation, though it doesn't like back pressure. I've used it with great success in cylindro-conical vessels. It is better suited to open fermentation because it's far easier to rouse an open vessel than a conical in order to get those last few degrees Plato to full attenuation.

Bob

I used wyeast 1098 for a British Bitter and it came it underwhelmingly fruity. It STUNK fruity out of the fermenter, but the fruitiness did not make it into the finish product. Just an FYI. I feel like it missed the target style for that fact.

petep1980 said:

I used wyeast 1098 for a British Bitter and it came it underwhelmingly fruity. It STUNK fruity out of the fermenter, but the fruitiness did not make it into the finish product. Just an FYI. I feel like it missed the target style for that fact.

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I'd say that the yeast performed exactly as it should.

Produces beers with a clean neutral finish allowing malt and hop character to dominate. Ferments dry & crisp, slightly tart, fruity and well balanced. Ferments well down to 65°F (18°C).

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For bitters I usually use the white labs burton yeast (thames valley in wyeast), I love the fruity esters that it gives out in basic pale ale recipes. I have been playing around for a little bit with WLP026 lately as well (Marstons's strain) and am quite pleased, although It appears not to be available in wyeast.

NQ3X said:

In fact, if you prefer Yorkshire ales, it's about the only widely-available yeast that will give the crucial characteristics thereof.

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bob, have you played around with the white labs platinum strain Yorkshire Ale yeast? I'm really looking forward to it coming around in a few months, and I really want to see what it can do with my usual bitter and brown ale grists. And what about wyeast West Yorkshire (1469) is that one any good? apparently comes from the Timothy Taylor brewery.

Freezeblade -

I love, love, love the 1469! I made sure to slant plenty.

It behaved much like Ringwood, being a real top-cropping yeast.

Flavorwise, it accentuated malt character with some nutty notes. It's become the yeast I use for my Dark Mild.

Really? It might be just the thing for my brown ale, which is based off the Samuel Smith's nut brown, too bad I can't get wyeast locally here.

i was going to throw 1469 out there too. I love this yeast. I also have many slants as I did not want to go without.

This is my current favorite strain for ales.

I'm a big fan of WLP005. Gives a great malty character, but has the ability to ferment relatively dry for a Brit strain. It's actually my yeast of choice for east coast US style IPA's too.

+1 on 005. I've used that one almost exclusively in my Bitters and I just tried it with a British IPA. Really helps accentuate the bready british malts.

BigNastyBrew said:

Really helps accentuate the bready british malts.

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This is exactly what I've been looking to do. Cheers.

petep1980 said:

I used wyeast 1098 for a British Bitter and it came it underwhelmingly fruity. It STUNK fruity out of the fermenter, but the fruitiness did not make it into the finish product. Just an FYI. I feel like it missed the target style for that fact.

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I am drinking the same 'experience' as we speak. Used 1098 on a SmaSH (deliberately). While the malt and hops are there, the yeast does nothing for the beer. If this was on tap at a pub, it would be the one and only pint that I'd have.

Oh well, it was an experiment. Used 1275 on the one that I brewed today.

Freezeblade said:

For bitters I usually use the white labs burton yeast (thames valley in wyeast), I love the fruity esters that it gives out in basic pale ale recipes. I have been playing around for a little bit with WLP026 lately as well (Marstons's strain) and am quite pleased, although It appears not to be available in wyeast.

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Per your advice I'm pitching WLP023 in my English pale. I'm excited to see how it works, I'm doing 10 gallons and hope I can have 5 ready in two weeks, and let the other 5 age of a little longer.

I like the WLP 002 for my ESB's

I got 4 vials of the White Labs Yorkshire Square (which I've never used before) last week. I am brewing the first in a series of extract special bitters with it this weekend. Hopefully I will post something about the results at some point.

Wow, you can't get Safale?

I like S-04 quite a bit. Easy to use and I get nice characteristic fruity esters with it.

I'm going to try S-04 on an ESB I'm brewing tonight.

I used Wyeast 1968 ESB for a Mild I have coming online this weekend and White Lab's London Ale for my Best Bitter. I also have a vial of British Ale around for use this weekend. I'm trying a bunch of different strains to see the differences.

enderwig said:

WLP023 Burton - In my opinion, the best yeast for british beers, its fruitiness complements the beer so well. Once you try it, you'll wonder why you waited so long.

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Missed this thread before. The first responder had it dead on for me. I love WLP023. I use this in my ordinary bitter recipe. I've tried other yeasts... sometimes for the ease of dry yeasts other times, just to experiment with different ester profiles.

On the same recipe that I normally use WLP023, I've tried S-04, Windsor, and WLP022 (Essex Ale). None of these gave the pleasant and unique fruity ester profile that WLP023 gives.

S-04. I use US-05 in about 99 percent of my beers though. To me its the AK-47 of the yeast world. I use it for almost all pale ales and Ipas (my big 2 brews) regardless of region normally.

I have an English bitter planned. Never brewed it.
I can't decide between S-04 (which I've had and like) or WLP005 British Ale, Ringwood.
I wish i could do 10G brew and split it up into 2 fermenters, but I can't drink that much

midfielder5 said:

I have an English bitter planned. Never brewed it.
I can't decide between S-04 (which I've had and like) or WLP005 British Ale, Ringwood.
I wish i could do 10G brew and split it up into 2 fermenters, but I can't drink that much

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No reason you can't brew up a 5/6 gal batch and split that between two 5-gal carboys...

OldSole said:

No reason you can't brew up a 5/6 gal batch and split that between two 5-gal carboys...

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I am worried about oxidation with all the extra headspace (?).

midfielder5 said:

I am worried about oxidation with all the extra headspace (?).

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Not an issue for primary fermentation due to CO2 production. Don't even worry about secondary. Just primary for 3-4 wks then bottle/keg. I use 5 gal carboys as primaries for all of my 3 gal batches.

Dunno if you plan on bottling or kegging, but I use 3 gallon kegs for the small batches. If you have 5 gallon kegs, you can purge them to minimize the amount of O2 in the headspace.

(sorry for the threadjack).
thanks OldSole!

I would go with the 1968....

if you're feeling crazy...try pacman. It hasnt disappointed me on any beer from a pale to a porter!

I've been using WLP013 London Ale for bitters. I've been pretty happy, but then I've been drinking a lot of the results.

I like S-04 a lot. I also like Wyeast 1335 and WLP007.

Are Wyeast 1098 and WLP002 essentially the same? If not, what is the Wyeast equivilent of 002?

KayaBrew said:

Are Wyeast 1098 and WLP002 essentially the same? If not, what is the Wyeast equivilent of 002?

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According to Jamil's yeast page (http://www.mrmalty.com/yeast.htm#Wyeast_vs_WLP) Wyeast 1098 is equivilent to WLP007 (Whitbred). The Wyeast equivilent to WLP002 is Wyeast 1968.