Imperial Yeast Stefon - Fast Fermentation!

[Dannyboy87]

So I've been trying to perfect my hefeweizen this summer. I've got my third batch fermenting right now. My local homebrew shop was out of Wyeast 3068, but they said Imperial Yeast Stefon was the same Weihenstephaner strain.

I pitched this stuff at the same temp as my other two batches, but the yeast is chewing through this beer! Took a gravity reading this morning (roughly 36 hours after pitching), and I've dropped from 1.052 to 1.022. That's about half the time it took the previous two batches to get to that gravity (one with Wyeast 3068 and the other with WLP300). The other odd thing is I very much needed a blowoff tube for every other batch, but the Stefon is leaving plenty of head space.

Has anyone else used this yeast? If so, does this sound similar to your experience? And how did the beer turn out?

- Danny Boy

 

[TheBrewBrotha]

Hey Danny, I love Imperial Yeast! It's all I use now. Haven't used the specific strain you're inquiring about but I have used five others from them. This ranges from A38 Juice to Darkness and Gnome and all have fermented quick as hell. Darkness needed a blowoff tube on my most recent stout after 30 hours and fermented from 1.070 to 1.014 in 7 days! Being this was somewhat of a big stout I wasn't expecting to do a gravity reading until at least 2-3weeks in but on day 7 I noticed all krausen was gone and active fermentation was non existent. Was aiming for an fG of 1.020'ish. I've noticed with Imperial Yeast, especially with fresh cans, fermentation babysitting is a must