Gah, I accidentally pressed the refresh button after writing a long post on this.
I am using Notti for my roast grain comparison stout experiments atm...M15 looks also very interesting, had good results with other MJ yeasts...
Would it make things easier if I would add that I have no possibility to control the temperature?
Probably should have done it the other way round, M15 is meant to be good with dark beers...
I meant to suggest kveik before, which gives mega flocculation and good attenuation, and obviously doesn't really care about temperature. BrewUK seem to be the only UK store with the Omega Hothead, the Yeast Bay Sigmund's Voss is a bit more widely distributed, but both seem to sell out almost as soon as they arrive in stock.
Looks like I got no idea about what the whitbread strain is. I tried googeling it, but found only recipes and shops. Could you get a bit more into detail about this strain or maybe quickly link me to a page explaining the history of this strain?
S-04 is the Whitbread strain and would be the best choice to recreate historic British beers.
S-04 is the dry version of the Whitbread strain and is the only currently available yeast that would have been available long ago.
Try "S-04 is one derivative of Whitbread B, otherwise known as Whitbread dry, the part of the Whitbread multistrain that had a dry colony morphology (not a dry taste). Like any other yeast it is descended from yeast that were "available" in the 19th century but has been evolving ever since, and has probably been put through more selection pressure than most. A single strain is going to be a poor match as British breweries generally used multistrains until after WWII as it was the only way for them to get commercially acceptable attenuation combined with the flocculation required for cask ale."
So a bit of history. Whitbread was founded in London in 1742 and became one of the great porter brewers in the 19th century. They were the archetypal "Big Beer", less interested in beer quality than in buying other breweries and "industrialising" beer production. Notably they were one of the pioneers of continuous beer production in tower fermenters in the 1960s. Tower fermenters required breweries to move from their traditional multistrains that top-cropped to a single "all-rounder" strain that bottom-cropped, and Whitbread B was found to be the strain that best thrived in that new environment. It spread widely through British brewing, adapting to new environments as it went.
That investment in R&D included a significant yeast bank and you have to be a bit careful about strains being identified as Whitbread strains that were merely collected by them. They sold their breweries to the future InBev in 2001 and their pubs to Enterprise in 2002; they remain a major company but operating hotels (Premier Inn) and coffee shops (Costa).
One of the breweries that Whitbread acquired was Mackeson of Hythe, on the south coast of Kent near Dover. They dated back to 1669, just a few years after the Puritans were kicked out, which makes them older than Shepherd Neame (who incorporated in 1698 making them Britain's oldest corporate entity still brewing, although they claim centuries of history before that). Having brewed in provincial anonymity for centuries, Mackeson hit paydirt when they thought to add lactose to create a milk stout. More importantly, they patented it and aggressively protected their IP whilst licensing it around the country with great success. Whitbread bought Mackeson in 1929 and at one point Mackeson milk stout accounted for over half of Whitbread's production, being brewed in four breweries around the country and at least some of the time it seems to have been partigyled with Whitbread's stouts. But fashion went the other way and it was one of the great losers in the lager revolution, it is now little more than a footnote even if it is the grandfather of all those trendy milkshake beers.
That's the verifiable history, now we get onto speculation of the "I read it somewhere on the internet" sort, none of what follows is reliable.
The commercial yeasts linked to Whitbread are:
Fermentis S-04
White Labs WLP007 - Dry English Ale
White Labs WLP017 - Whitbread II Ale
Wyeast 1098 - British Ale
Wyeast 1099 - Whitbread Ale
S-04, WLP007 and 1098 are derived from Whitbread B (generally held to be NCYC 1026) - that doesn't mean they are identical, or that they *are* Whitbread B, but are closely related. They all have their own family history, and will have evolved in their own particular way depending on where they were taken from and how they have been treated since. Also dry yeast behave differently in the first generation as they are grown up aerobically below the Crabtree threshold, which means more yeast cells for Mr Fermentis but changes their metabolism in various ways compared to growing in a pouch.
WLP017 is described as a "traditional mixed yeast culture" - but White Labs talk about it as though it was a single strain in relation to their recent genome sequencing efforts. It could just be a mix of flocculation variants, the poor attenuation surely means that there's no WLP007 in there but it does suggest a similarity to 1099.
I've seen it suggested without any particular evidence that Whitbread B came from Mackeson and 1099 represents part of their porter yeast from the London brewery. It would kinda make sense though, Whitbread B is notorious for lactic acid production and being fed all that lactose would encourage lactate metabolism to be enhanced compared to the same yeast before 1909. DNA sequencing suggests WLP007 and WLP017 aren't particularly connected; WLP002 "Fullers" is a close relative of WLP007, and WLP041 "Redhook" a slightly more distant one, but together they seem to form a distinct group within British brewing yeasts, which would be consistent with the idea of isolation in a provincial brewery.
But I'm sorry, I just can't be doing with this idea that Whitbread B is some kind of living fossil that has been preserved in aspic as a relic of 18th century brewing. It's been evolving like any other yeast - and the shock of going through continuous fermenters will have changed it more than most. In particular the idea that a stout yeast from Kent or a London porter yeast is somehow relevant for historical IPA brewing is a stretch. Yes they did make IPAs in London, but the classic ones came from Burton which had its own very particular kinds of yeast (including some that are effectively POF- saison yeasts) with very different brewing characteristics. It's a bit like saying you could use the Golden State Warriors to recreate historic Vancouver Canuck teams - after all, they're from vaguely the same area (give or take a few hundred miles) and basketball and ice hockey are kinda the same.
![Craft A Brew - Safale S-04 Dry Yeast - Fermentis - English Ale Dry Yeast - For English and American Ales and Hard Apple Ciders - Ingredients for Home Brewing - Beer Making Supplies - [1 Pack]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41fVGNh6JfL._SL500_.jpg)
