I love 1318 though, it's been my latest yeast of choice for english ales and it really shines in ordinary bitters/milds.
How do you prefer to ferment with this strain (i.e., temps, pitching rate, etc.)?
I love 1318 though, it's been my latest yeast of choice for english ales and it really shines in ordinary bitters/milds.
Allegedly the Boddington's strain and was already going to be the next yeast I try. My ordinary bitter going now is using the Scottish strain (1728) which is prob too neutral but that's what I had on-hand.I love 1318 though, it's been my latest yeast of choice for english ales and it really shines in ordinary bitters/milds.
Either way, you can't go wrong. They would both be very informative. If you went with 4 yeasts, what other two would you go with?
Allegedly the Boddington's strain and was already going to be the next yeast I try. My ordinary bitter going now is using the Scottish strain (1728) which is prob too neutral but that's what I had on-hand.
How do you prefer to ferment with this strain (i.e., temps, pitching rate, etc.)?
My ESB got down to 1.016 from 1.057 with no diacetyl that I can pick up (probably due to the sugar I used), so I'm crash cooling it now, to be bottled Sunday/Monday. The malt flavor is the best I've gotten from a beer- a London flashback in a glass. Hopefully the crash cooling helps keep the yeast from doing anything else to it.
What sort of fermentation schedule did you use?
1. Cold pitch and warm up?
2. Open or closed ferment?
3. D Rest?
4. When do you cold crash? Once FG is achieved? How long would you recommend cold crashing to stop yeast activity?
5. Are you going to bottle with a secondary yeast?
6. Carbing with corn sugar or something else?
Sorry for all the questions. I have a fresh vial of WLP002 sitting in my fridge and have decided that it is time to start the journey of dialing in a house British ale to keep on hand. My dad and one of my co-workers are huge fans of malty British beers and I would like to play in this end of the spectrum for awhile.
First thing I will probably do (after brewing with the 002 I have on hand) is try some of the other yeasts mentioned in this thread
I have never really tasted my beers this early, due to being wary of introducing the wild yeast, so this one has been very eye-opening. With almost no external indication, my current English Pale Ale dropped 3 points (from 1.018 to 1.015) over the past 24 hours. And the taste totally changed as well. All of the oillly-ness (diacetyl??) and most of the tartness (acetaldehyde??) left literally overnight. Really there is less "green" in this beer on day 5 than I have had in most after 10 days or more. And for the first time I can actually taste some real English yeast character in a beer I made--and big round malt to boot.
There might be something to this cold-warm-cold thing.
What yeast are you using on this one?
I just got a batch going, too. 95% MO, 5% dark British crystal, 1.054/45IBU. I mashed at 149 for 90 minutes, at 1 qt./lb., and boiled for 90 minutes. I pitched the yeast only from a WLP002 starter straight from the fridge into 64-degree wort.
I feel I have the malt profile down pretty good for my English ales, now I just need to perfect my late hopping technique and I'll be all set.
Haha, that is one other thing I'm trying to nail down. It's very difficult to get that sweet, floral, fragrant hop note british beers have. I've tried 15 minute only, 10 minute only, flameout only and 80C after flameout steep only additions, and still haven't perfected it. Too much hops and it gets grassy and astringent, too little and they're nearly undetectable. What have you found to work for you? Maybe we should start a hopping british ales thread!
This is going to sound crazy - heretical almost, but I've started using a really clean, high AA% hop (magnum, galena) at 60min for most of my bittering charge. I then add my flavor/aroma hops starting at 15-10 min with a big flameout addition and maybe a dry hop. For me, I like my English ales to have a firm, clean bitterness followed by a huge malt profile in the middle and to end with a burst of that flowery-fragrant hop aroma. I originally used EKG for bittering, 30 min, 10, and flameout but I kept finding I was getting grassy notes in the finished beer and a muddled malt profile. I'll have to do more experimenting.
I kegged my batch yesterday and last night I decided to give it a taste even though it was uncarbed. Wow! The malt expression in this beer is unbelievable! It's not that sweet-malty you get when a beer underattenuates but a true complex malty flavor. Amber malt has never tasted so good. Even though this beer only had a 1.044 OG, it has the malt intensity and complexity of a beer of 1.060 or higher. Now I know why british brewers tend to use little crystal malt and frequently include adjuncts. This beer has MORE of that beautiful malt flavor I was looking for than the commercial british beers! It tastes more along the lines of a british strong ale or winter warmer without the alcohol. It's nutty, toasty, caramelly and delicious. I can't wait to start pumping out british ales with this technique.
I brewed up a chocolate stout yesterday and pitched some slurry of the 1968 into it. I'm following the same fermentation profile so we'll see if I can consistently get such good results. I pitched yesterday at 3:30 at 63*F and fermentation started very quickly. It just hit 68*F this morning at 10:30 so I'm expecting a little bit more fruity esters this time around. In two weeks or so I'll brew up another bitter and start perfecting my house recipes. Now that I know the secret, there will be no stopping me!
you should be just fine unless you had dirty poop water from your toilet in your blowoff water
That's great! I made a ******* mistake and crashed my beer in primary. Never having crash cooled a beer, I didn't think much about it. If I had thought about it a bit, I might have figured out the obvious. It sucked about a pint of water through the blowoff tube as it cooled. I'm bottling tomorrow, and assuming my beer isn't f***ed by the suckback, I'll report back in a couple of weeks. Next time I crash cool, it will be in a sealed secondary.
When I crash cool I remove the carboy bung and place a sanitized balloon over the mouth of the carboy. The balloon prevents air from getting in and contracts and expands as the pressure changes. If I'm fermenting in buckets, I remove the plastic thingy from inside the airlock and put a balloon over the end. No worries about suckback.
Hope your beer wont be affected elkdog.
I tasted my beer again last night and now that it is carbed slightly, the malt flavors aren't as overwhelming as before. It actually does taste like a bitter and not something bigger. I'm very happy with it and can't wait to taste the casked portion in the 5 L mini keg. I didn't prime it or anything so hopefully it's able to attenuate a little more and get a bit of carbonation. I think I'll plan on drinking it in 2 weeks or so.
The chocolate stout I've got going with 1968 was at 1.022-1.024 this morning so I reduced the temp to 66. I'll go ahead and move it down to 64 this afternoon. The taste was very sharp, I guess due to all the suspended cocoa. That beer definitely still has some coming-together to do.
So is there any logic to thinking the same temperature regime might work with Burton Ale yeast (WLP023, Thames in the Wyeast world)?
I wanted to try dropping the temp at the end of fermentation on my brown porter but chickened out.
Are you talking about going from warm to cool (68 to 64 per the Fullers example), or cool to cold (64 to 44 or whatever)? I assumed Fullers dropped the temp so far before fermentation was done because that beer went into casks for secondary and dropped the final few points there. I thought everyone else in the thread here was crash cooling just after terminal gravity had been reached. I thought the purpose of the final temp drop was to drop all the yeast. Is that not the case?
I've been rousing it.
Sounds good bierhaus. I think the results of your experiment should really help to shed light on the fermentation questions I have.
Well I figured I would post the early results of my little experiment. For those who don't know, I originally pitched some 1187 into a split batch of a simple English bitter. One batch fermented at 68F for 14 days before a D-rest at 70F for another two. This beer was not cold crashed, it stayed at room temp until I 'kegged' it on day 17. However, the other batch was fermented for 10 days until the gravity had begun to stablilize and then I crash cooled it immediately. It remained in the fridge at 43-45F for a few days and was kegged by day 14. Both beers were 'kegged' in a "coors home draft" and carbonated with co2 cartridges to about 2 volumes.
Now for the results: Right off the bat, you can tell the two apart. The one that stayed at room temperature is much cleaner, with just a bit of pleasant diacetyl and some good malt flavor. It still is a bit young, but the malt and hops come through cleanly and well balanced. I don't think I would let this type of a beer sit on the yeast cake past day 21, as you really do lose a lot of malt/yeast character. In contrast, the batch that got cold crashed right as fermentation ended pretty much screams "British yeast." There is much more diacetyl present than the one that got the d-rest, though it's not so much that it reeks of butter. The malt/yeast profile on this one is also much more robust, you get a lot more of that biscuit/toasted malt character and the beer tastes much fresher overall.
In conclusion, I definitely think cold crashing after the bulk of fermentation has completed does make a big difference on the final beer. The cold crashed version has much more malt/yeast flavor, though at the same time isn't as clean tasting as the one that sat at room temperature. I'd say the overall balance of flavors favors the one that sat at room temp, though I still prefer the cold crashed one for its full flavored malt profile. Also, I find the cold crashed version to have more hop flavor/aroma too. My only complaint about the cold crashed version is the diacetyl. I think the way to get around this would be to pitch fresh yeast at bottling/kegging and allow the beer to clean up some of the diacetyl in the keg while at room temp for a few days. I am pretty happy with my results so far, though I think my normal English yeast fermentation schedule is right on target for getting both a clean tasting beer and one that won't lose those English malt and yeast flavors.
Coming up I plan on doing some more experimenting with fermenter geometry and open fermenting. I'll keep everyone posted.
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