Is the Imperial Yeast A09 Pub really the Fullers Strain?

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Kristoffer84

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I read now much about the Fullers Strain and what i could be... some say its the London ESB or WLP002 and the A09 Pub.
So i drank some Fullers London Pride and for me the Taste was like Fullers self say: Caramel a tiny bit sharp and some marmelade style....
The ESB i can say is not like that...
But Imperial Yeast says themself that the A09 Pub is Fullers Strain. They write it on their Site at least. So the only way to find out is to brew with it the London Pride. I will do so when i get the yeast but are there others here arround who tested the Original and then the A09 and can confirm it is the same Yeast ?
 
Fuller’s do a bottle conditioned IPA that contains the brewery‘s primary strain. It‘s nothing like WLP002. It should be fairly easy to get a bottle, as there’s an exported label.


Just a thought here but there's more to a beer than the yeast.

I‘d like to see you try to ferment a batch of wort 😀
 
Is my point that hard to understand? If a beer you brew doesn't taste exactly like the flagship beer you were trying to clone, you have to look at ALL of the ingredients and more importantly the process. It's just a flaw of logic to immediately blame the yeast. I didn't say that you can make a beer without yeast.
 
Imperial Yeast says themself that the A09 Pub is Fullers Strain. They write it on their Site at least.

I don't see where Imperial themselves have ever actually said this. Do you have a link?

My guess is that Wyeast 1968 will come the closest to the real Fullers yeast. WLP002 and Lallemand London (ESB) have lower average attenuations that will not make quite the same beer.
 
I don't see where Imperial themselves have ever actually said this. Do you have a link?

My guess is that Wyeast 1968 will come the closest to the real Fullers yeast. WLP002 and Lallemand London (ESB) have lower average attenuations that will not make quite the same beer.

47357148-EF6D-4488-82CE-2DFB2D9EB3AA.png

I think the confusion here is at the bottom of the page...it clearly says profile though...no where in the description does it say its fuller's though.
 
I've read enough statements from brewers I trust that Pub is the closest to Fuller's strain. Is it the Fullers strain, who knows, but it seem the closest with the marmelade.
 
Something impolite that is removed

Eh, I've actually generally thought his posts were quite helpful, almost going out of his way at times to do so. Maybe we read different posts or both have sort of self fulfilling thoughts and see what we expect. The question about the rest of the recipe is valid.

Anyhow - I'd love to know if the Fuller's is out there as well. Also would like to see where Imperial is stating as much, if they indeed have.

@McMullan - which beer do you have in mind? I've read about 1845 being used this way but haven't ever in my life seen it. Can find ESB, porter and London pride here in our metro but never seen anything else.

@Northern_Brewer might know more, but having read all through a long ESB thread and keeping up not sure there is a definite answer there either.

I've got an ESB on deck once I keg my pale ale, probably within a week. Would love to have some Fuller's yeast for it! Imperial is my current plan, after a bunch of tries with 1968.
 
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Granted, I stopped paying attention to this some time ago, but as I understand it, there is no single"Fuller's Strain." To my knowledge, Fuller's continues to use a mixed fermentation.

Of the Fuller's strains available, Pub is my favorite. It kills me to say that because I learned to brew UK ales with WY1968 and WY1469--I love those strains. Nevertheless, Pub has more character and yields a superior result in my brewery.

Also, consider using proper inverted sugars, rather than C-malts. It's a night and day difference.
 
Just a thought here but there's more to a beer than the yeast. What was the rest of the recipe like?

It was the original London Pride Recipe. Several threads here it was posted and transformed in hobby brewer meassures.


I don't see where Imperial themselves have ever actually said this. Do you have a link?


My guess is that Wyeast 1968 will come the closest to the real Fullers yeast. WLP002 and Lallemand London (ESB) have lower average attenuations that will not make quite the same beer.
Eh, I've actually generally thought his posts were quite helpful, almost going out of his way at times to do so. Maybe we read different posts or both have sort of self fulfilling thoughts and see what we expect. The question about the rest of the recipe is valid.

Anyhow - I'd love to know if the Fuller's is out there as well. Also would like to see where Imperial is stating as much, if they indeed have.

Besides their Post on the Homepage (picture posted) i called them yesterday and they confirmed that is assumable the Fullers Strain.
 
Granted, I stopped paying attention to this some time ago, but as I understand it, there is no single"Fuller's Strain." To my knowledge, Fuller's continues to use a mixed fermentation.

Of the Fuller's strains available, Pub is my favorite. It kills me to say that because I learned to brew UK ales with WY1968 and WY1469--I love those strains. Nevertheless, Pub has more character and yields a superior result in my brewery.

Also, consider using proper inverted sugars, rather than C-malts. It's a night and day difference.

Good to hear you like it. Can you tell me your prefered Temperature the Yeast works for you?
Also is the 09 possible to go lower ? i heard from people they used it on 16 Celsius.
Most importantly the taste. Is there this marmelade caramelic taste like ? :D
Also they write to do a diacetyl rest. In germany its said that a diacetyl rest is done a 14-20 celsius... i wonder why they ask for it anyway since that yeast i allways above those temperatures... Also brulosophy made an experiment where he didnt find any difference in that on 16 an 20 Celsius. What you say?
 
I read now much about the Fullers Strain and what i could be... some say its the London ESB or WLP002 and the A09 Pub.
So i drank some Fullers London Pride and for me the Taste was like Fullers self say: Caramel a tiny bit sharp and some marmelade style....
The ESB i can say is not like that...
But Imperial Yeast says themself that the A09 Pub is Fullers Strain. They write it on their Site at least. So the only way to find out is to brew with it the London Pride. I will do so when i get the yeast but are there others here arround who tested the Original and then the A09 and can confirm it is the same Yeast ?
In my experience, pub is the closest thing which you can get. If it is the actual strain, I cannot say. It is much better than the wlp002 which gave me fusels from hell and less flavor/yeast character than pub.

I actually just brewed a London pride clone by accident, have a look at the Miraculix Best thread in the ale section, on the last page I am describing what I did.

I just tasted it straight out of the fermenter, still waiting for it to be conditioned and carbed properly, so take the "clone" with a grain of salt
 
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Somewhat off topic and not sure why I write this... but Escarpment labs London ale 1 is supposed to be "same" as Imperial Pub I think, and thus probably also something like the fullers strain? I brewed with it just some weeks ago and kegged it the other day... it had a heavy strawberry jam aroma, nothing I've got from Pub before.
 
Granted, I stopped paying attention to this some time ago, but as I understand it, there is no single"Fuller's Strain." To my knowledge, Fuller's continues to use a mixed fermentation.

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. However in recent years, it has diverged into two substrains that can be distinguished by DNA analysis but not microbiologically. (John Keeling, pers comm) Every generation, a yeast strain will mutate a little bit, they are constantly changing.

Which is why it's really unhelpful to think in terms of what you buy from a yeast lab as being "***the***" yeast from Brewery X. Aside from the fact that traditional British breweries normally use a multistrain and Wyeast, White Labs etc will only sell you a single strain (whereas eg Brewlab sells some as multistrains), as soon as you take it away from the brewery, it will be mutating and diverging from the yeast used in the brewery.

My guess is that Wyeast 1968 will come the closest to the real Fullers yeast. WLP002 and Lallemand London (ESB) have lower average attenuations that will not make quite the same beer.

Mutation and divergence are a particular problem for most Wyeast and White Labs yeast given their history, of being harvested at some point in the 1990s and passed around US homebrewers for years before finding their way into a freezer at a yeast lab. So that's why I can believe that WLP002 and 1968 may have been harvested from a Fuller's beer at some point many years ago, but either the labels got switched or they've just mutated and have lost what Fuller's and their former head brewer regard as the defining signature of their yeast. Genetically both WLP002 and 1968 appear to be very close relatives of WLP007, and are best regarded as just another Whitbread variant rather than something that is at all relevant to Fuller's.

https://www.fullers.co.uk/blog/beer-articles/yeast
"Fuller’s yeast gives orange citrus, and toffee flavours to the beer (marmalade notes at discernible at higher A.B.V.), whereas Gales yeast tends to bring a soft fruit flavour to the fermentations, with red berry fruits coming through."

Fuller’s: Brewing up a storm
‘One constant of all the ales is the secret ‘house yeast’. It has a very orange-y, marmalade-y flavour,’ says George. ‘It’s easy to pick up in ESB and, with Oliver’s Island, we enhance that flavour by brewing with orange peel.’

I will do so when i get the yeast but are there others here arround who tested the Original and then the A09 and can confirm it is the same Yeast ?

So WLP002 is not "the Fuller's yeast". 1968 is not "the Fuller's yeast". A09 Pub is not "the Fuller's yeast".

A09 Pub may have come from Fuller's, but having spent time away from the brewery is no long the same. But A09 Pub does behave similarly to the Fuller's yeast in giving some marmalade character, so is probably your best bet if you want to clone a Fuller's beer with a yeast that comes in a pouch.

Allegedly Brewlab Thames Valley 3 also comes from Fuller's and is rather more likely to have been taken from a healthy, authentic, source rather than one that's been sitting on a shelf in the US for months. But the only way to get "the Fuller's yeast" is by harvesting directly from cask dregs or bottle-conditioned beer.

- which beer do you have in mind? I've read about 1845 being used this way but haven't ever in my life seen it. Can find ESB, porter and London pride here in our metro but never seen anything else.

The only bottle-conditioned beers they do are 1845 and what we know as Bengal Lancer, which originated in an IPA made for the Swedish market but there's a suggestion that Lancer is now just labelled Fuller's IPA in export markets. Availability should be improving since the Asahi takeover.

Vintage is also bottle-conditioned, but it's not ideal to be harvesting from something that strength and I've seen reports of USians struggling to get live yeast from it. Retailers get a bit nervous about bottle-conditioned beers so may avoid them, although bottles of 1845 are in most supermarkets here, Lancer is harder to find.

Escarpment labs London ale 1 is supposed to be "same" as Imperial Pub I think... it had a heavy strawberry jam aroma, nothing I've got from Pub before
Sounds more like Gale's per the Fuller's comment above?

Just a thought here but there's more to a beer than the yeast. What was the rest of the recipe like?

From a European perspective, US brewers spend far too much time obsessing over recipes, and not enough over yeast and process. All three are important.

Fuller's brewers tweet pages from their brewbook from time to time and I've collated them in this thread :

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/thread...imperials-neipa-from-the-horses-mouth.642756/
ESBrewer has used them to come up with what he regards as a convincing clone of Fuller's ESB (in post #42).

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/
 
Is my point that hard to understand? If a beer you brew doesn't taste exactly like the flagship beer you were trying to clone, you have to look at ALL of the ingredients and more importantly the process. It's just a flaw of logic to immediately blame the yeast. I didn't say that you can make a beer without yeast.

Things to consider in this regard:

Malt - do they have an arrangement with their maltster for certain specifications?
Hops -They are likely going to their hop sources and selecting particular lots
Process - What is their process? Here's a description of the Fuller's process - The Making of a Classic: Fuller's ESB — Beervana

There is much more - even the Fuller's version is different on cask than in a bottle. The best way to experience it is to go to Chiswick, take the tour which hopefully still ends with 30 or minutes or so of drinking beer in the cellar of the brewery.
 
Random stuff that's related, if anyone is interested:

* From the Fullers page quoted above is also this - "Every ten to twelve generations, a fresh culture of yeast is grown to keep the quality consistent with every brew batch, similar to the way sourdough bread is made."

* The Escarpment Labs page for that yeast does indicate jam, and toasty as characteristics - English Ale I

Doesn't look like the Escarpment yeast is going to be easy to find in the US.
 
I personally have found Pub to be the closest to the descriptions. I've never had a fresh Fuller's beer so I don't know but I feel that I get closer to a marmalade character with the Imperial strain. One thing some others have alluded to is that they may have started out the same strains but over time there is drift with all strains at all manufacturers I believe. Some of the same strains from different manufacturers will give very different results. I used Omega's "Fullers" strain for a long time as my house yeast before I moved to WLP023. I ran the gambit on a lot of the Omega strains and fell on their "Burton" yeast but it was harder to find in stock places than WL. I think you would be happy with Pub personally but then to get the same "Fullers" flavors it would take matching the process and the ingredients.
 
Something else, is even Fuller's says their house yeast produces more marmalade and fruity characteristics in a higher gravity beer so that may be something to take into account. I would assume their ESB to be one of the "higher gravity beers" though. I tend to ferment at 66-68F and like it there.
 
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. However in recent years, it has diverged into two substrains that can be distinguished by DNA analysis but not microbiologically. (John Keeling, pers comm) Every generation, a yeast strain will mutate a little bit, they are constantly changing.

Which is why it's really unhelpful to think in terms of what you buy from a yeast lab as being "***the***" yeast from Brewery X. Aside from the fact that traditional British breweries normally use a multistrain and Wyeast, White Labs etc will only sell you a single strain (whereas eg Brewlab sells some as multistrains), as soon as you take it away from the brewery, it will be mutating and diverging from the yeast used in the brewery.



Mutation and divergence are a particular problem for most Wyeast and White Labs yeast given their history, of being harvested at some point in the 1990s and passed around US homebrewers for years before finding their way into a freezer at a yeast lab. So that's why I can believe that WLP002 and 1968 may have been harvested from a Fuller's beer at some point many years ago, but either the labels got switched or they've just mutated and have lost what Fuller's and their former head brewer regard as the defining signature of their yeast. Genetically both WLP002 and 1968 appear to be very close relatives of WLP007, and are best regarded as just another Whitbread variant rather than something that is at all relevant to Fuller's.

https://www.fullers.co.uk/blog/beer-articles/yeast
"Fuller’s yeast gives orange citrus, and toffee flavours to the beer (marmalade notes at discernible at higher A.B.V.), whereas Gales yeast tends to bring a soft fruit flavour to the fermentations, with red berry fruits coming through."

Fuller’s: Brewing up a storm
‘One constant of all the ales is the secret ‘house yeast’. It has a very orange-y, marmalade-y flavour,’ says George. ‘It’s easy to pick up in ESB and, with Oliver’s Island, we enhance that flavour by brewing with orange peel.’



So WLP002 is not "the Fuller's yeast". 1968 is not "the Fuller's yeast". A09 Pub is not "the Fuller's yeast".

A09 Pub may have come from Fuller's, but having spent time away from the brewery is no long the same. But A09 Pub does behave similarly to the Fuller's yeast in giving some marmalade character, so is probably your best bet if you want to clone a Fuller's beer with a yeast that comes in a pouch.

Allegedly Brewlab Thames Valley 3 also comes from Fuller's and is rather more likely to have been taken from a healthy, authentic, source rather than one that's been sitting on a shelf in the US for months. But the only way to get "the Fuller's yeast" is by harvesting directly from cask dregs or bottle-conditioned beer.



The only bottle-conditioned beers they do are 1845 and what we know as Bengal Lancer, which originated in an IPA made for the Swedish market but there's a suggestion that Lancer is now just labelled Fuller's IPA in export markets. Availability should be improving since the Asahi takeover.

Vintage is also bottle-conditioned, but it's not ideal to be harvesting from something that strength and I've seen reports of USians struggling to get live yeast from it. Retailers get a bit nervous about bottle-conditioned beers so may avoid them, although bottles of 1845 are in most supermarkets here, Lancer is harder to find.


Sounds more like Gale's per the Fuller's comment above?



From a European perspective, US brewers spend far too much time obsessing over recipes, and not enough over yeast and process. All three are important.

Fuller's brewers tweet pages from their brewbook from time to time and I've collated them in this thread :

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/thread...imperials-neipa-from-the-horses-mouth.642756/
ESBrewer has used them to come up with what he regards as a convincing clone of Fuller's ESB (in post #42).

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/

Thank you for that very informatic post. I contacted Imperial Yeast yesterday and they told me that the A09 is a Fullers strain. They cant tell me if its the newes one but ... naja ;) I am normaly not cloning any recipes as i only do my own. But when i tasted the London Pride i thought trying to get that taste of the yeast also into other Ale i do. So now i will rund on three ways: I ordered allready two days ago the A09 and 4 Bottles of 1845 Fullers. I will harvest the 1845 yeast and make a split batch. Also i talked to Alision of brewlab and will try their TV III yeast. And the end we will see whats going on i hope :). Its also doesnt have to be a exact match which is nearly impossible. i take my standard malt from Warminster and i take my stock water. The only question is , if i can get some nice marmelade like flavour that would be enough.
 
Thank you for that very informatic post. I contacted Imperial Yeast yesterday and they told me that the A09 is a Fullers strain. They cant tell me if its the newes one but ... naja ;) I am normaly not cloning any recipes as i only do my own. But when i tasted the London Pride i thought trying to get that taste of the yeast also into other Ale i do. So now i will rund on three ways: I ordered allready two days ago the A09 and 4 Bottles of 1845 Fullers. I will harvest the 1845 yeast and make a split batch. Also i talked to Alision of brewlab and will try their TV III yeast. And the end we will see whats going on i hope :)
Brilliant, let is know how the split batch goes!
 
higher gravity beer

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.
 
Fuller's London Pride (and Pilsner Urquell) are two of my favorite beers. Both have become white whales for me. Despite using A09, WLP002, or WY1968 and following everything but the partigyle process from the below episodes of "Can You Brew It" which provides the grain bill, hop schedule (type, time, amount), fermentation schedule (temp and gravity changes), and partigyle process straight from the head brewer's mouth, the beers have never produced the marmalade aroma / flavor from the bottle.

First attempt, not cloned - Can You Brew It: Fullers London Pride - The Jamil Show 05-24-10 | The Brewing Network
Second attempt, cloned but not same as bottled version from US - Can You Brew It: Fullers Re-brews - The Jamil Show 11-08-10 | The Brewing Network

So, are the yeast from the Fuller's brewery, maybe, but, unless the marmalade aroma and flavor are coming from the partigyle process (which I do not understand how this would create marmalade aroma/flavor in any beer), or travel oxidation or pasteurization, then the yeasts are not the ones being used by Fuller's to brew London Pride at this time or Fuller's is doing something they are not telling us.

If you ever successfully clone the US bottled version of this beer please post the recipe - my sanity depends on it:eek:.
 
Timely thread as I have a pack of Pub now to grow up and use. (Out of date)

I had been thinking of doing a Best Bitter and an English Pale Ale like I always do. But you guys have me thinking about an ESB now. But that wouldn’t be a fair comparison to the Best Bitters and Pale Ales I brewed with other strains.

I just have 2 more beers to brew before I can get to that pack of Pub.
 
Timely thread as I have a pack of Pub now to grow up and use. (Out of date)

I had been thinking of doing a Best Bitter and an English Pale Ale like I always do. But you guys have me thinking about an ESB now. But that wouldn’t be a fair comparison to the Best Bitters and Pale Ales I brewed with other strains.

I just have 2 more beers to brew before I can get to that pack of Pub.
I think it really shines in an oprdinary bitter as well. My favourite beer with my favourite yeast.
 
I personally have found Pub to be the closest to the descriptions. I've never had a fresh Fuller's beer so I don't know but I feel that I get closer to a marmalade character with the Imperial strain.
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.
 
When I was in DC a couple years ago they have a place down there called Elephant and Castle. It’s a chain of British themed bars. They had a couple beers on handpump. I enjoyed it, wish we had a place like that closer. There used to be one in Philadelphia (still far for me) but that one closed up years ago.
6EBF550D-72A4-4AFF-8DB5-D9BD73F1EC0C.jpeg
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When I was in DC a couple years ago they have a place down there called Elephant and Castle. It’s a chain of British themed bars. They had a couple beers on handpump. I enjoyed it, wish we had a place like that closer. There used to be one in Philadelphia (still far for me) but that one closed up years ago.View attachment 756908View attachment 756909View attachment 756910View attachment 756907

Forest and Main isn't too far from you and they have some amazing beers on hand pump. I travel up that way for work and almost always go by there when I have the chance. They do great Saison and other beers too.
 
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. :D
 
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?
 
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.
 
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 :D
 
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.
 
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. :D

Just returned from about a month in the UK. This was amazing.
IMG_20211219_155638_822.jpg
 
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