About to fire up my first Stout, let's talk Yeast

[cscade]

I've been brewing IPAs and bitters all summer, using a lot of Nottingham for dry and WLP002 for liquid. I'm about to order up ingredients for my first stout and I am seriously considering this kit from NB.

Their yeast recommendations are S-04 for dry and Wyeast 1728 for Liquid. I have never used either.

Jamil's pitching rate calc says 1.5 packages of dry at 1.086 or 2L of liquid. I can do a 2L starter easily on my stir plate.

My concern is at 1.086, is oxygenation going to be a problem? My fermentation temp will be ~63f ambient in my basement. I always shake my carboys, I'm not using pure oxygen yet.

Any pointers, tips, or yeast suggestions? Think this kit is decent? I'd like my first stout to be as tasty as possible!

 

[JesseRC]

I love s-04. You will get a compact yeast cake with no need to move to secondary.

 

[cscade]

OK, S-04 it's going to be, unless someone else has input?

 

[Bobby_M]

Nothing wrong with your WLP002 if you have a slurry saved.

 

[cscade]

Nothing wrong with your WLP002 if you have a slurry saved.

I've got an unused vial actually. I have never tried to store or reuse yeast. Seems like it's not that hard though?

I'm about to brew another bitter in a month, would it be possible for me to use my vial of WLP002 for this Stout, and then harvest the yeast for the bitter? Or will the environment of a 1.086 beer alter the strain and make it less suitable to repitch into a 1.036 beer?

I'm totally clueless on yeast re-use and handling in between batches

 

[Bobby_M]

You can get into more complicated methods of yeast washing and storage but I take the lazy man's approach of sanitizing a jar/lid by boiling it and I siphon the yeast slurry into it when I'm done racking the beer off. I swirl it up and then restart the siphon with my autosiphon. One thing I don't like doing that a few folks may do is trying to pour the slurry out of the carboy. I don't trust the lip of the carboy to be sanitary.

I mark the jar with the batch and date just in case that beer turns out to be infected. If you wait a long time to use it, it's best to build it up with a starter and see how it smells.

 

[cscade]

How do you know what amount to pitch next time? Say I used it right away, so I didn't have to worry about aging. I know (just from experience) what to expect from a 2L starter. But I would assume the cake would have a much higher cell concentration and therefore I'd pitch less than 2L?

Thanks for your input.