Favorite American yeast for LOWER attenuations

Hi All-

My house yeast for all clean beers and american ales is WLP090. I love the performance, speed, clean fermentations, and hard flocculating, but it is a serious attenuator. Even with fairly high mashes, it's going to go to town on any moderate gravity beer I make.

What's your favorite clean american yeast to use when you need to leave some mouthfeel in your beers, for big porters or malty brown ales?

Well that's kinda the thing about attenuative yeasts - they generally tend to also be very clean fermenters. American Ale II (Wyeast 1272) is fairly clean but a little less attenuative.

I guess a question I have is what do you mean by American? "American in origin," or "usable in American styles"? Because if it's the latter you have a bit more options. Scottish Ale yeast is a little less attenuative, but it has its own flavor quirks. Same with Irish Ale yeast (yeah I know that's a controversial statement but fermented at cold temps Irish Ale yeast is pretty clean).

Subscribing because I'm interested as well.

I like 1272 as well but usually use 1056 as my all around strain. I also like1968 for my IPAs and PAs. Denny's strain is also popular for all around brewing but I've never used it

daksin said:

Hi All-

My house yeast for all clean beers and american ales is WLP090. I love the performance, speed, clean fermentations, and hard flocculating, but it is a serious attenuator. Even with fairly high mashes, it's going to go to town on any moderate gravity beer I make.

What's your favorite clean american yeast to use when you need to leave some mouthfeel in your beers, for big porters or malty brown ales?

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It's all what you prefer I suppose. I like San Diego Super. But then, I like dry, well attenuated ales. With the right recipe you can make a beer as good or better than any lager I've ever had. I think it's all in what you are after. You say you're into American Ales, have you tried Wyeast 1056 American Ale Yeast? It sure aint WLP090. It's a good all around ale yeast that brings hops forward. Oh, btw, Denny has no yeast. it was simply a defunct yeast after BrewTek bit the dust that Denny persuaded WY to sell in his name. No problem, it's still a decent yeast. Cheers

sudbuster said:

You say you're into American Ales, have you tried Wyeast 1056 American Ale Yeast? It sure aint WLP090. It's a good all around ale yeast that brings hops forward.

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I've used other Chico strain yeasts including WLP001 and US-05, and their flavor contribution is similarly minimal to the finished beer. I haven't noticed any muting of hops by the WLP090 despite its hard flocculation characteristics. If anything, having less yeast in my finished beer helps the perception of the hop brightness

sudbuster said:

Oh, btw, Denny has no yeast. it was simply a defunct yeast after BrewTek bit the dust that Denny persuaded WY to sell in his name. No problem, it's still a decent yeast. Cheers

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It's my understanding that Denny's Favorite 50 started out its life as Brewtek CL-50, but has been taken out so many generations in Denny's house that it is significantly different from the original strain. Wyeast got the primary culture from Denny, not Brewtek if I'm not mistaken. I'm sure that the man himself will jump in here to set me straight on which parts of that are wrong, though.

To the OP you described Denny's fav. I love it for IPAs, I haven't used it for malt focused beers, yet...I can't imagine it would do anything but perform admirably.