wyeast 1056

So A buddy of mine and I are going to brew an american barley wine around thanksgiving, so I will brew a pale ale, this weekend to get a cake to pitch it on.

It is my understanding that wyeast 1056 and WL-001 are the same yeast strain. WL website say it has a high tolerance to alcohol, (10%-15%)

Has anyone used wyeast 1056 or WL-001 up to say 12-14 percent? How did it go? I dont know why, but I thought it had a lower threshold. Any thoughts or expierences would be helpful.

Cheers

It says 11% on the Wyeast website: http://www.wyeastlab.com/rw_yeaststrain_detail.cfm?ID=5

MC

I have use wlp1 up to 11% with no issues at all. Just make a big enought starter and oxygenate it really well. Do you have an injection system? If you do then give it about a minute when you pitch. I have also heard that you can dose it again at 12 hours in and that will give you good results.

I like wlp1 a bit better than wy1056 because I feel like it attenuates a little bit better and is a bit more robust, but I like drier beers.

You might run into lagging fermentation at the 12-15% alcohol levels so you could brew a smaller beer and add some concentrated wort in after primary is going so you don't stress the yeast out too much at first. Is this going to be all malt or are you using sugar to help boost up the alcohol %?

MC: Thanks for bringing that to my attention. I assumed that they would be the same.

Hopper: I have not locked in to a recipie yet. I assumed it would be all grain, but dont have an objections to using dried malt or sugars if you have a good reason for me.

If I were to pick up another yeast, to brew these 2 beers with, what would you use, knowing my intended BW style?

Oh wow, I totally missed the cake to pitch on part... that should do really well I would imagine and probably could handle a 1.1+ brew dumped onto it. I would just make that pale pretty low gravity like 4 to 5% so you don't stress out the yeast.

WLP1 would be my go to for this kind of style. It accentuates the hops well and has a fairly neutral profile.

You just gotta be careful when you do a repitch cuz it will take off right away and heat up and probably have a crap load of blowoff...

Just look at the White labs website and see what their higher gravity yeasts are. I would just go with wlp1.

All grain is probably the way to go with this one. I was just curious because if you were going to use some sugar you could just throw it in a few days into primary to kick up the gravity a bit.