English yeasts and the miracle ester sweet spot of generation nr X

[cire]

Is it really your yeast that is tolerant or is it actually your customers? I'm not criticizing your practice as I'm well aware that in a commercial setting the latter is all that really matters.

More probably meeting the customer's demand. While an overwhelming majority of beer drank in the UK is bland, highly carbonated and served too cold to taste much anyway, there is still a hard core of drinkers demanding a product drinkers can enjoy and even debate the range of flavors and the qualities they bring.

I live in a fairly typical part of England where this evening I will spend a few hours in a local pub. It will likely offer 10 different real ales hand pulled from cask as it does most days as well as those mass produced in great volumes. There will be more than 50 breweries within 20 miles of that pub and most pubs in our little island. Small breweries will make at least 5 different styles of ale such that our publicans can offer a varied selection, typically from 250 ales even were they to restrict themselves to breweries within an hour's travelling distance. Any publican who wishes to retain customers would stand the loss or return the product to the brewery and try not to test their tolerance another time.

But I take your point and will witness this evening many drink the most advertised national brands which I and others could not.

 

[SanPancho]

Point being in that a dipa with heavy hop load it makes sense to reduce trub, hops, sediments, etc as much as possible to maximize your yields of what is likely an expensive to produce beer.

A pinch of zinc and cup of nutrients would likely result in less volume loss than the amount of old yeast needed to equal them. And the yeast may not even provide enough zinc.

So it seems like a strange practice in this case. That is the point.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

Point being in that a dipa with heavy hop load it makes sense to reduce trub, hops, sediments, etc as much as possible to maximize your yields of what is likely an expensive to produce beer.

A pinch of zinc and cup of nutrients would likely result in less volume loss than the amount of old yeast needed to equal them. And the yeast may not even provide enough zinc.

I'll say again - the yeast isn't there to provide zinc. You need to consider the evolution - they've gone from no zinc anywhere and 200g of vitamins in the whirlpool to 80g vitamins, a tub of old yeast and 260g valine in the whirlpool and 160g vitamins + 1.3g zinc in the fermenter.

They regard that as progress, despite it adding to the sediment over the original DIPA v3 which had no old yeast added.

 

[ESBrewer]

Old yeast could affect taste by providing nutrients or affecting taste/outlook directly. Especially when the amount of additional yeast is so high that it affects the amount of trub they see... I don't know how easy it is to tell how exactly all that old yeast affects the outcome. It will likely add a little bit of amino acids, yeast proteins, lipids, minerals etc. to the wort... Especially proteins would directly add to the body & head, but may also cause some more or less wanted 'yeastiness'. Maybe they have analyzed the effect, maybe they just feel that it tastes/looks better that way. Adding it during the whirlpool will help release compounds and ensures that old yeast is not going to be viable during fermentation. If they would be looking for zinc, they would probably at least load it with zinc somehow and not to add zinc separately.

 

[beervoid]

I'll say again - the yeast isn't there to provide zinc. You need to consider the evolution - they've gone from no zinc anywhere and 200g of vitamins in the whirlpool to 80g vitamins, a tub of old yeast and 260g valine in the whirlpool and 160g vitamins + 1.3g zinc in the fermenter.

They regard that as progress, despite it adding to the sediment over the original DIPA v3 which had no old yeast added.

Valine and ALDC makes sense to me. If they practice shortening fermentation time and not giving the yeast alot of time to clear up in order to get more esters.. That would mean less time to clean up diacetyl thus these enzymes would come out very handy.
Either this or it's just some extra insurance?

 

[Northern_Brewer]

Old yeast could affect taste by providing nutrients or affecting taste/outlook directly. Especially when the amount of additional yeast is so high that it affects the amount of trub they see...

Errr - where do you get the idea that they're adding so much yeast that it affects the amount of trub they see? I certainly didn't say that - SanPancho was trying to explain their process by claiming that it was driven by reducing trub, I pointed out that they had gone the other way, from no yeast as yeast food to some yeast. Even one yeast cell introduced as yeast food would counter SanPancho's point as it would technically represent an increase in trub - but it certainly wouldn't be visible!

They're not doing it as a flavour thing, it's just a free way to feed the yeast using material that would otherwise go to waste.

If they would be looking for zinc, they would probably at least load it with zinc somehow and not to add zinc separately.

See above - they're not doing anything special with the yeast, certainly not loading it with zinc. It's just recycled waste.

Anyway, this is all rather off-topic to beervoid's original point, which was about the effect of yeast generation on its character. It seems to be a recognised thing that Conan take a generation or two to get into its stride - not as much as five though. John Kimmich claims to be able to recognise what generation Heady Topper has been made with when tasting blind, and I get the impression that they blend batches to smooth out the differences. But then once you get past 10-12 generations it gets into a cycle where the desired characters fade in and out. You can imagine genetic mechanisms for how that happens, but I think for now you just accept that it's how it seems to behave.

 

[HTH1975]

Is it really your yeast that is tolerant or is it actually your customers? I'm not criticizing your practice as I'm well aware that in a commercial setting the latter is all that really matters.

If there was a downside to pitching hot we wouldn’t do it. Our beer always comes out great. We don’t always pitch above 25C, but sometimes during the summer it’s unavoidable as the heat exchanger won’t get it down any lower with the size of CLT we have. We have glycol chillers, so it’s easy to get the temperature down.

 

[HTH1975]

May I ask which yeast or yeast family and if the higher temp pitch is to encourage ester formation?
Also how far down do you cool it in what time?
Is rousing neccesary?
What about pitching rates, is underpitching common practice for encouraging esters?

It’s the old Scottish & Newcastle yeast strain. However, we’ve had it since 1996, and I’m not sure when it was put on slants at Brewlab, so it could have morphed into something else since then. It’s a beast of a strain - fruity, rips through the wort, high attenuation, flocs great, and tolerant to warmer fermentation’s without a load of off flavours.

We don’t rouse, our FVs are 4000L (ish) max capacity and it would literally need a huge paddle or added mechanism to do that. We don’t have stalling issues - the yeast regularly gets down to 1.010, but we will chill at around 1.012 before racking to CT and then cask.

Pitching rates are fairly loose, 2/3’rds of a 25L homebrew bucket is about average. We do test for viability with microscope, and the yeast is acid washed regularly. As long as your process works and is consistent, then that’s the main thing. Breweries were making beer before we fully understood what was going on, so to say it’s a robust process would be an understatement.

 

[SanPancho]

wrong. I never claimed to explain their process. my comment- also known as a "remark" -- is that it seems strange to me to do that (dead yeast) in general, when nutrients are now widely available and relatively cheap, and the ONLY one typically not available to yeast is zinc, which is again very cheap. have I heard of folks doing it? yes, of course. but only brewers that I might affectionally refer to as "old timers".

the strangeness is compounded when you're talking about a recipe for a dipa, which is one of the beers that has some of the highest losses to trub/hops/yeast/etc. adding more mass -- that soaks up beer-- than necessary seems odd to me.

as to "explaining" their recipe "evolution" you are again way off base. I have no idea who these people are or any of their beers or any of their histories- brewery or recipes. i got the dipa reference from your own post.

I guess you could say that in a roundabout way I was wondering why they do it- could dead yeast in fact be a source of zinc? referenced by my comment above that I don't recall if zinc persists in yeast, or if its used up in fermentation.

and no, zinc supplementation is not historically required to make beer. neither are alot of things.
perhaps we should refer to the OPs original reason for posting- how do you get the esters to pop?
zinc and leucine (typically found in nutrient blends) have positive correlation with ester production.

 

[beervoid]

wrong. I never claimed to explain their process. my comment- also known as a "remark" -- is that it seems strange to me to do that (dead yeast) in general, when nutrients are now widely available and relatively cheap, and the ONLY one typically not available to yeast is zinc, which is again very cheap. have I heard of folks doing it? yes, of course. but only brewers that I might affectionally refer to as "old timers".

the strangeness is compounded when you're talking about a recipe for a dipa, which is one of the beers that has some of the highest losses to trub/hops/yeast/etc. adding more mass -- that soaks up beer-- than necessary seems odd to me.

as to "explaining" their recipe "evolution" you are again way off base. I have no idea who these people are or any of their beers or any of their histories- brewery or recipes. i got the dipa reference from your own post.

I guess you could say that in a roundabout way I was wondering why they do it- could dead yeast in fact be a source of zinc? referenced by my comment above that I don't recall if zinc persists in yeast, or if its used up in fermentation.

and no, zinc supplementation is not historically required to make beer. neither are alot of things.
perhaps we should refer to the OPs original reason for posting- how do you get the esters to pop?
zinc and leucine (typically found in nutrient blends) have positive correlation with ester production.

Just speculating here, since they are adding valine and ALDC, perhaps they work together better with whats in old yeast?

 

[beervoid]

Errr - where do you get the idea that they're adding so much yeast that it affects the amount of trub they see? I certainly didn't say that - SanPancho was trying to explain their process by claiming that it was driven by reducing trub, I pointed out that they had gone the other way, from no yeast as yeast food to some yeast. Even one yeast cell introduced as yeast food would counter SanPancho's point as it would technically represent an increase in trub - but it certainly wouldn't be visible!

They're not doing it as a flavour thing, it's just a free way to feed the yeast using material that would otherwise go to waste.



See above - they're not doing anything special with the yeast, certainly not loading it with zinc. It's just recycled waste.

Anyway, this is all rather off-topic to beervoid's original point, which was about the effect of yeast generation on its character. It seems to be a recognised thing that Conan take a generation or two to get into its stride - not as much as five though. John Kimmich claims to be able to recognise what generation Heady Topper has been made with when tasting blind, and I get the impression that they blend batches to smooth out the differences. But then once you get past 10-12 generations it gets into a cycle where the desired characters fade in and out. You can imagine genetic mechanisms for how that happens, but I think for now you just accept that it's how it seems to behave.

I have heard that from Kimmich as well hence I opened this thread.
On another note, I've had the same thing happen to me with a later generation of wy1318 london III.

 

[mediant]

the strangeness is compounded when you're talking about a recipe for a dipa, which is one of the beers that has some of the highest losses to trub/hops/yeast/etc. adding more mass -- that soaks up beer-- than necessary seems odd to me.

If the rate is any close to that of Servomyces (1g dry per 100 liters), then there shouldn't be any loss to speak of.

zinc and leucine (typically found in nutrient blends) have positive correlation with ester production.

AFAIK leucine selectively stimulates Isoamyl acetate ester (banana, which is welcome is certain styles only), while valine stimulates Isobutyl acetate production (fruity, seems more appropriate in IPAs). But then, if they only add 260g of valine, it makes about 100mg/l (assuming their batch is 2,500 liters), which is only enough for treating VDK, as per https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3708283/

 

[SanPancho]

Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe they do it for another reason. Without getting the answer directly from the source its a bit of a guessing game. Could be something in their water, grist, mash, brewhouse, yeast harvest/propagation, cellar, etc etc. Too many variables to just guess. You really need to understand the big picture.

However there are many research papers on ester production, and if that is what you are after id get ideas there and follow them to a method that works for you. Higher end in the yeasts temp range, nutrients, less o2, no spunding, and a downwards temp/time slope are all associated with ester production. There are others, those are the basic ones.

 

[SanPancho]

servomyces is dry product that dissolves in wort. There is essentially no trub at all. Dead yeast? Not the same.

I noted leucine as thats the first paper that came to mind and as i recall they used s04, which seemed appropriate here. There was no claim that its the one responsible for flavors OP is chasing. Simply a statement that ester production can be increased by adding nutrients. May not be “historical “ but it still works.

 

[HTH1975]

Zinc is added for cell reproduction - that’s the only thing we add in respect to yeast health. I doubt that zinc in and of itself is responsible for ester production - I could see a case for arguing a lack of zinc could cause off flavours, due to unhealthy/underpitched yeast.

 

[beervoid]

If they throw old yeast in the whirlpool wouldn't it mimick reusing an older generation?
As older generations will contain more and more dead yeast.

So the question is, does the old yeast provide nutrition for more ester production or does the yeast mutate by generation 6?
Which is consequently about where I started noticing increased ester production 3x in a row now. 2x times with Conan 1x with London Ale III.
I just found this all so coincidental.

 

[Vale71]

If they throw old yeast in the whirlpool wouldn't it mimick reusing an older generation?

I don't really think it would. The reason being that old yeast thrown into the whirlpool gets cooked and thus reduced to its constituent compounds whereas yeast that you pitch into cold wort even if dead will take a (hopefully) long time to autolise and will therefore mostly be unavailable as a nutritional source for the live yeast as yeast, unlike some amoebae, is devoid of any digestive system and cannot cannibalize whole cells.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

have I heard of folks doing it? yes, of course. but only brewers that I might affectionally refer to as "old timers"...I have no idea who these people are or any of their beers or any of their histories- brewery or recipes.

If you've not heard of Cloudwater, here's some context - this is a good introduction for USians, here's a longer interview. They're certainly not old-timers!

Don't get hung up on the trub aspect of old yeast, it's minimal in this context.

Cloudwater are obsessed with minimising VDKs - one of them is super-taster of diacetyl, which is why they use ALDC and valine to respectively destroy a precursor and minimise its production in the first place. ALDC or valine on their own are only partially effective, which is why it's worth using both together.

 

[beervoid]

If you've not heard of Cloudwater, here's some context - this is a good introduction for USians, here's a longer interview. They're certainly not old-timers!

Don't get hung up on the trub aspect of old yeast, it's minimal in this context.

Cloudwater are obsessed with minimising VDKs - one of them is super-taster of diacetyl, which is why they use ALDC and valine to respectively destroy a precursor and minimise its production in the first place. ALDC or valine on their own are only partially effective, which is why it's worth using both together.

Had the pleasure to drink some of their beers, they are up there with the rest Tree House, Trillium, Other Half etc..

Do you know by any chance what the
Collect 15c
Trim 17c
temperatures stand for on their sheet?

 

[Northern_Brewer]

Wort is "collected" in the FV - so they're transferring to the FV at 15C, and then "trimming" (ie adjusting) the temperature to 17C. They've gone into more detail on their fermention profiles in some of their blogs, it was discussed a bit at the time over on the main NEIPA thread, which is perhaps a more appropriate place for it?

 

[leesmith]

I think the takeaway from cloudwater is practice providing as ideal an environment for the yeast as you can....keep it as healthy as possible.

Esters will follow.

 

[SanPancho]

Ah, interesting. A super taster of diacetyl would be a great addition to a brew staff.

 

[beervoid]

Wort is "collected" in the FV - so they're transferring to the FV at 15C, and then "trimming" (ie adjusting) the temperature to 17C. They've gone into more detail on their fermention profiles in some of their blogs, it was discussed a bit at the time over on the main NEIPA thread, which is perhaps a more appropriate place for it?

I would say the esters I got from conan are very similar to Cloudwater, I think they are using the same or related strains. I dont start fermentation that low though but my fermentation is similar.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

I would say the esters I got from conan are very similar to Cloudwater, I think they are using the same or related strains.

They are generally pretty open about what yeast they use, mostly it's one or other Conan for their hoppy stuff. Used to be a mix of WLP095 and WLP4000, then they tended to use more 4000, most recently they seem to have mostly been using Lallemand's version. They do mix it up thought - for instance they did some DIPAs with the Lees yeast which is pretty typical of the multistrains used by British regionals - it's been repitched for nearly 5000 generations. That only works if you have a multistrain to give the resilience that is missing from the single strains typically sold by the homebrew labs.

 

[beervoid]

I've decided to mail the yeast manufacturer on this matter to see if they could shed some light. They say it's very unlikely this is from a genetic shift and speculate it's probably that because of the older generations loosing viability over time i'm under-pitching at a point I get more esters as the yeast has to replicate much more.

 

[leesmith]

Good research.

Will you knowingly underpitch now?

And are the flavors/aromas from those 4th/5th generations amplified versions of the healthy versions esters or different esters?

 

[beervoid]

Good research.

Will you knowingly underpitch now?

And are the flavors/aromas from those 4th/5th generations amplified versions of the healthy versions esters or different esters?

I will be experimenting but the problem is I have no way to count yeast. I'll try to pitch less with a new package probably.
Amplified esters I would say describe most accurately. I always make 10gallon split in 2 batches to experiment.
I usually have a hard time picking up differences in yeast when I test different yeasts but with this batch it was obvious which one is conan.

 

[bierhaus15]

Very interesting data. I am not surprised to see CW increase their pitch rate/zinc levels over the course of the brews, as the flavor and stability issues that come with a stressed fermentation are not worth the possible increase in esters. There are other means of increasing fruity esters that does not affect yeast health and beer quality. Their use of acetolactate and valine is interesting though. It is nice to see they are adding zinc in the FV and not in the boil as is mostly the case; most of the zinc gets bound in the trub and the yeast see little benefit from available zinc in fermentation.

I still find the 24g/L dry hop completely absurd and contrary to achieving good hop aroma. Whatever works for them.

 

[leesmith]

....There are other means of increasing fruity esters that does not affect yeast health and beer quality.

Can you elaborate on this?

 

[beervoid]

Very interesting data. I am not surprised to see CW increase their pitch rate/zinc levels over the course of the brews, as the flavor and stability issues that come with a stressed fermentation are not worth the possible increase in esters. There are other means of increasing fruity esters that does not affect yeast health and beer quality. Their use of acetolactate and valine is interesting though. It is nice to see they are adding zinc in the FV and not in the boil as is mostly the case; most of the zinc gets bound in the trub and the yeast see little benefit from available zinc in fermentation.

I still find the 24g/L dry hop completely absurd and contrary to achieving good hop aroma. Whatever works for them.

I just had a 24g/l dipa from them. It had a slight hopburn and a in my opinion muddled hop character.
Please do elaborate on the other means of increasing fruity esters.