Is the Imperial Yeast A09 Pub really the Fullers Strain?

[Miraculix]

Yeah we don’t get too many beers from the UK here.

Stouts are pretty easy to find. No problem finding Guinness, Murphy’s in nitro cans and I recently found Mackeson’s in bottles.

Pale ales are a different story. Boddington’s is easy to find, again with the nitro cans. Bass Ale. Outside of that I don’t see much. If you go to one of the bigger distributors or craft specialty places they might have some oddball stuff like Hobgoblin, etc thats been sitting on a shelf for a long time.

Fuller’s is hit or miss. Distributors don’t usually have it. When they do, it’s sold in 4 packs for some reason. A couple bars here have it, one being a place that specializes in English cuisine with lamb and Scotch eggs and the like.

I love Fuller’s bottles to use for bottling my homebrew. Very pretty and very sturdy bottles. I have 2 cases I saved up over time.

So I agree, at least here in South Eastern PA we don’t usually see much from the UK and what we do get is mostly nitro cans. When we see bottles have to guess how old they are.

We don’t see authentic Bitter, though one place not too from here does a cask ale festival every year - or at least they used to in the days when people were allowed to gather. I’ve never had a real Mild either. Only homebrew versions.

This is why we brew.

Took me a few years to find a dark mild, even when living in the UK. It is not that common any more, at least not in the south. I heard in Wales it is still a thing but mainly the old folks drink it there. At least this is what my colleague told me who used to work in a pub there. She could not really understand my excitement about dark mild at that time.

 

[bwible]

This long thread is good on how to ferment WLP002 in particular, and is well worth a read for anyone interested in British beers :

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/thread...emps-and-profiles-cybi-other-thoughts.221817/

Thanks for posting this very informative read.

So this idea of “cropping” yeast - never done this. I see where people are doing pseudo-open fermentation by using a bucket with the lid set on loosely. (Because none of us has a Burton Union in our basement)

Are people doing something like going in and using a big spoon (sanitized, of course) to skim the yeast foam off the top? What are the guidelines for doing this, ie when and how much?

 

[Gus_13]

Thanks for posting this very informative read.

So this idea of “cropping” yeast - never done this. I see where people are doing pseudo-open fermentation by using a bucket with the lid set on loosely. (Because none of us has a Burton Union in our basement)

Are people doing something like going in and using a big spoon (sanitized, of course) to skim the yeast foam off the top? What are the guidelines for doing this, ie when and how much?

I have done exactly this in both British Style and Hef Style beers. I stopped doing it and started just over building my starters and keeping back some of it for the next starter for my brew. I had okay results with the top cropped stuff but it was just a hassle haha. pseudo-open ferment all my Saison and Hefe but hardly ever my British style beers now. I just put aluminum foil over the top of my beers as soon as I see krausen. After a couple days when activity is slowing down, I'll put the top back on with an air lock. I ferment Saisons in my Fermonsters so the opening isn't too big. My other beers are typically in my Spiedels or my SS Brew Buckets. But I would think it would work find in those too.

 

[Kristoffer84]

Thanks for posting this very informative read.

So this idea of “cropping” yeast - never done this. I see where people are doing pseudo-open fermentation by using a bucket with the lid set on loosely. (Because none of us has a Burton Union in our basement)

Are people doing something like going in and using a big spoon (sanitized, of course) to skim the yeast foam off the top? What are the guidelines for doing this, ie when and how much?

I did it sometime. Its pretty Easy. Get some bottles of the beer you wanna get yeast from and which has active yeast used for conditioning. Then you get three bottles let the bottle sit so all the yeast go down... then pour into glass until yeast wanna get out ... whats left in bottle you harvest and propagade up like normal yeast starter. I ll do soon with 1845... i try at least

 

[Northern_Brewer]

View attachment 756907

That's not some handpulls. This is some handpulls :

(Main bar at the Manchester beer festival 2 years ago. You know that thing where Google digs out photos from ages ago? This one hurt, the last big festival I went to)

 

[patto1ro]

My understanding, from listening to a Fuller's brewer on a podcast, is... they have two "coppers". One gets filled with first runnings, the other filled with second runnings. They are both hopped and have yeast pitched (at identical rates). After fermentations they are mixed in varying percentages to produce the different beers.

I'd easily buy that different yeast flavors come from the different gravities, and that reproducing the beers would need one to reproduce the methods as well. Otherwise of course we are doing something different and just hoping for similar results. Even if we pitched their yeast into our single batch homebrews, even with identical malts and hops, we could still expect to get a different result.

As an aside I consider it evidence that pitch rates do matter. I don't think everyone agrees with that.

The different gyles are blended after the boil and before the yeast is pitched. They are not fermented separately.

 

[eshea3]

Took me a few years to find a dark mild, even when living in the UK. It is not that common any more, at least not in the south. I heard in Wales it is still a thing but mainly the old folks drink it there. At least this is what my colleague told me who used to work in a pub there. She could not really understand my excitement about dark mild at that time.

Just returned from about a month in the UK. This was amazing.

 

[Miraculix]

Just returned from about a month in the UK. This was amazing.View attachment 756975

That sounds and looks lovely! I'd really like to have one.

 

[eshea3]

That sounds and looks lovely! I'd really like to have one.

I was quite lucky to find it at the Wenlock Arms in London. That and Timothy Talor Boltmaker on cask in Nottingham were real treats.

 

[tracer bullet]

Never mind!

(Can't delete our own posts I guess)

 

[Bramling Cross]

Fuller's went from a "typical" British 3-strain to a single strain when they moved to conicals in the 1970s, and that's what they've used for production and for bottle conditioning ever since.

Thanks, as always, for the straight dope! Your posts are always time well spent. They're not just informative, they're pleasant to read. You're a good writer.

Again, thank you.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

Also i talked to Alision of brewlab and will try their TV III yeast.

Alison's great, although Brewlab have been a bit funny about supplying homebrewers in recent years - I guess it's still fairly quiet for them due to Covid and the time of year so they'll be OK, at one point they tried to offload all their homebrew supplies to the new Hop & Grape but I suspect that's not really worked out for them.

Make the most of it if they are taking homebrew orders - they won't directly link yeast to the brewery, but if you say you are trying to clone something, they will usually have something suitable - in the case of Black Sheep the yeast will be labelled HH, and by coincidence Black Sheep got their yeast and squares from Hardy & Hanson. They're particularly strong on the northern British yeasts which are underrepresented in the US yeast labs - something like CC is fun, as cire can confirm....

 

[bwible]

Just returned from about a month in the UK. This was amazing.View attachment 756975

6%? That must be one of them there Imperial Milds.

 

[eshea3]

6%? That must be one of them there Imperial Milds.

For that era, it was simply a Mild. 6% was not unusual.

 

[DBhomebrew]

For that era, it was simply a Mild. 6% was not unusual.

Ron has recently posted some info on London X (mild) ales of the late 1800s. Average ABV, 5.72%.

"Late 19th-century X Ales look ridiculously strong to modern eyes, often weighing in at over around 1060º. Believe it or not, gravities had declined. In the 1850s, most London examples of the style had been over 1070º."

http://barclayperkins.blogspot.com/2022/01/london-x-ales-1880-1899.html?m=1

 

[Kristoffer84]

Alison's great, although Brewlab have been a bit funny about supplying homebrewers in recent years - I guess it's still fairly quiet for them due to Covid and the time of year so they'll be OK, at one point they tried to offload all their homebrew supplies to the new Hop & Grape but I suspect that's not really worked out for them.

Make the most of it if they are taking homebrew orders - they won't directly link yeast to the brewery, but if you say you are trying to clone something, they will usually have something suitable - in the case of Black Sheep the yeast will be labelled HH, and by coincidence Black Sheep got their yeast and squares from Hardy & Hanson. They're particularly strong on the northern British yeasts which are underrepresented in the US yeast labs - something like CC is fun, as cire can confirm....

So i dont konw but it seems there was just not enough vital yeast in those 1845 bottles. i started with a mini starter as allways but since 2 days its not doing anything. I give it another 2 days and then i would make a new Thread to ask if somebody had more sucess and could send me some over