Pacific ale yeast (wlp041)

[catdaddy66]

Making a starter with this yeast to use in a honey pale ale. I have read up on this stuff as it's the first time I've used it... Just wondering what other people's experience has been with this strain. Does and don'ts, things to expect, flavors and fermentation times/characteristics, you know the drill.

Thanks in advance for all of the assistance!

 

[GurraG]

My new favorite for British bitters! White labs lists the attenuation as 65-70%, but both times I've used it I ended up with 75% attenuation.

 

[catdaddy66]

My new favorite for British bitters! White labs lists the attenuation as 65-70%, but both times I've used it I ended up with 75% attenuation.

Did you mash low? I plan on using it in a west coast pale ale mashed at 150°. I hope it gets 75% attenuation!

 

[Smellyglove]

I've been using it for IPAs for several years and it's great, fruity. The attenuation number from WL seems a bit low comparing to how it performs for me.

 

[GurraG]

Did you mash low? I plan on using it in a west coast pale ale mashed at 150°. I hope it gets 75% attenuation!

I mashed at 149 F, and the recipe was something like 82% base malt, 10% torrefied wheat and 8% crystal malt.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

WLP041 seems to be a cousin of Fuller's and Whitbread B, so I'd think in those terms, and perhaps watch out for lactic if you push the temperature too high.

 

[GurraG]

I fermented at 19 Celsius (measured against the fermentor), and got a fair amount of esters, but no lactic twang.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

Yep, 19C you should be alright, 20C seems to be where British yeast start going a bit crazy. I might pitch at maybe 16-17C and then let it rise to 19C for 24-48 hours then take it back down to 16-17C if you're wanting to be British about it. (there's a lot to be said for simplicity though!)

 

[catdaddy66]

Stepped this up today and while the activity is mild, there is activity!

A larger amount of yeast sediment is growing than I would expect for the visible indicators. Going to harvest a bit then pitch in the am.

 

[catdaddy66]

I woke up early Monday (~44 hours from starter being made) to find a nice krausen on the 1L starter. Pitched it into 5 gal of wort... 24 hours later I see the beginnings of a krausen forming.

Normally my beer has a thick krausen between 12-15 hours, so this ale yeast is a bit slower than I am used to seeing. No problem!

It will be beer.

 

[ba-brewer]

I have used it twice so far, first time mashed low(150) and added a bit of sugar because of the published attenuation and ended up with 84% attenuation. Second time I mashed a bit higher at 152 and no sugar and still got 80% attenuation. Both time I got good activity at first then it slowed down a bit, they took 8 days to get to terminal gravity.

The first beer is a little fruity but it was hopped with azacca so not sure if it is the yeast or the hops. It cleared up nice without any fining in the keg. I fermented at 68 then bumped it up to 70 after a few days, dont think I get any lactic but the FG was 1008 so it does have a crisp finish which could hide it. The other beer in not ready to drink yet.

 

[ba-brewer]

WLP041 seems to be a cousin of Fuller's and Whitbread B, so I'd think in those terms, and perhaps watch out for lactic if you push the temperature too high.

Would you know if this relationship would indicate a need for higher levels of initial oxygen on pitching?

 

[Northern_Brewer]

Define "higher"! Fuller's and Whitbread B are adapted to life in conicals so they don't need as much oxygen as many Yorkshire yeasts for example.

 

[ba-brewer]

Define "higher"! Fuller's and Whitbread B are adapted to life in conicals so they don't need as much oxygen as many Yorkshire yeasts for example.

In my mind higher would mean to use a oxygen stone and pure oxygen to get the DO up over what can be obtained by stirring and sloshing. Treat the yeast more people do with lager yeasts.

I believe I seen you comment about the oxygen requirements of the Whitbread A & B and one does better with a higher level of DO. I usually only give pure oxygen to my lagers but just trying to figure out if a this yeast(WLP041) would benefit from some too to get a faster finish.​

 

[Northern_Brewer]

Don't think that was me. I thinkk it's one of those, all yeast will appreciate some oxygen, but if it's like its siblings then it's probably less necessary for WLP041 than eg the Yorkshire Square yeasts.

 

[ba-brewer]

@Northern_Brewer OK thanks.

 

[EnglishAndy]

WLP041 seems to be a cousin of Fuller's and Whitbread B

Now this is interesting. I've always regarded WLP041 as a probable expat that was appropriated from one of our own. Do you have any more information about how the strain came about?

 

[Northern_Brewer]

Assuming Mr Malty is correct in assigning WLP041 to Redhook in Seattle, then all I can give you is what I've interpolated from the Amazon preview of the brewery's official history, Redhook: A Microbrew Success Story by Peter Krebs. So take the following with a pinch of salt, but from what I can work out :

Redhook started in 1981, so one of the first "new" breweries without a big infrastructure of yeast suppliers to fall back on. So they seem to have gone to ?University of Washington? and got some strains from their microbiology department for testing. They liked best the beer made with yeast marked "British Ale", so that's what they went with - but it got contaminated with POF+ wild yeast and despite trying to market it as "Belgian", it almost broke the company. They managed to clean it up but it didn't scale up well into their production kit - which sounds like they may have encountered Whitbread B's tendency to throw lactic acid? For a while they used yeast from Schwarz as Sierra Nevada were doing (so BRY-96 Chico?), but when they moved into a bigger new brewery they found that the original yeast became happier.

So with the caveat that I may have misread my Amazon previews, it looks like WLP041 originated as a "British Ale" in the yeast bank of a generalist microbiology department. So it's likely to be something fairly mainstream that was either brought from NCYC or harvested from a mainstream beer. Which all kinda fits.

 

[Smellyglove]

Everything to me about this yeast is british, except the attenuation which feels american. Haha.

 

[ba-brewer]

Has anyone used both wlp041 and wyeast 1332 do they behave the same?

 

[Northern_Brewer]

I've not compared them but they may well be related. Certainly the headline numbers are similar. 1332 is supposedly from Hale's in Washington state. Mike Hale did an apprenticeship at Gale's before starting up his eponymous brewery in 1983 using the Gale's yeast.

The Gale's yeast supposedly came from Brickwoods of Portsmouth, who had a marketing agreement with Whitbread from 1951 and were fully taken over by them in 1971. So they would have had access to Whitbread yeasts somewhat earlier than Fuller's - my personal theory is that Fuller's started using Whitbread B when they moved to conicals in the late 1970s, but they told the marketing department that they had selected part of the historic Fuller's multistrain. It would fit the family tree, which suggests that WLP041 split from the Whitbread B line a bit before Fuller's. Of course it came fulll circle when Fuller's bought Gale's. As an aside, supposedly Marble's yeast originated at Gale's and they recently collaborated with Fuller's to brew Gale's Prize Old Ale again.

 

[ba-brewer]

I looked at the red hook web site and in the about section they actually mention in 1982 people where calling their beer "banana beer", which sort of supports the wild yeast thing. I was living in the Portland area between 81 and 84 and had Red hook on tap there before moving, I don't recall their beer tasting like bananas so they must of cleaned it up pretty quickly.

 

[catdaddy66]

6 days in and I have brought the temp up from 65° to 68° after seeing voracious activity in the primary. It has actually increased and the size of the krausen actually doubled! Exciting as all get out...

 

[catdaddy66]

Alright... Activity in the fermenter has slowed considerably though a strong krausen remains in place. Most of my beers have little to no krausen by this point but this yeast is slower than average. Has anyone else had lengthier fermentation times like this? I am considering postponing bottling up to a week to make sure it has reached FG.

 

[ba-brewer]

Both times it took 8 days for me to reach final gravity, most yeast are there in 4 or 5 days. I gave it a few more days after that to make sure it was done. I use a refractometer to check for final gravity so it does not take much to see it things are stable.

Some yeast will leave a yeasty krausen on top even after active fermentation is done.