WLP075 Hansen Ale

[smata67]

Wow. 4 hours later and I'm getting a pop about every 10 seconds on the airlock. I've only had 1 stuck fermentation in the 40 batches I have brewed to date and was always a bit skeptical about the "stir it back up" approach, but it seems to be having some effect, as this was not happening prior to "rousing."

 

[ba-brewer]

After seeing how fast the first beer dropped clear I am giving the second batch a swirl/rouse every now and then after 36hours. Plan to stop swirling on day 4 or 5 and allow it to settle out.

 

[jimfire85]

View attachment 634197

Okay, might have a problem here. Day 8 (June 27-July 5) into fermentation, which appeared to go fine, things are looking finished, but FG is too high at 1.026 from 1.068. I got fairly significant airlock activity at 12 hours and it continued up to Day 5. Fermentation to that point was at 68F, but I had to move the bucket out of the chamber due to main refrigerator failure, so it has been sitting for 3 days at 75F. Krausen rise to 2" is evident and there are even traces of it on the lid. It looks done at this point and does taste a bit on the sweet side. I was shooting for 7% and its at 5.5%. Going to stir things up and see what happens.

Seems like a healthy pitch to me, blew the lid off your bucket.

 

[Nagorg]

My starter defiantly had light krausen visible around the 24 hour mark. I brewed yesterday and pitched into 1.067OG wort around 6:45PM. Today at 8:45AM there is airlock activity and SG is down to 1.061. Not bad, down 6 points in 14 hours! Cant wait to have this beer flowing from my Perlick's..

 

[smata67]

Day 10 and I've had to pitch in some corn sugar and energizer to see if I can get better than 1.023. I think the yeast has gotten lazy, much like my cousin Jerry. Target attenuation is 77.5% which would put me at 1.015 FG. I thought I was fine given vigor through Day 5, but was not to be. This was an extract brew, no excuse for this happening. If I use this yeast again I will not start much over 1.050 and pitch a good bit.

 

[Nagorg]

...and My brother pitched a vial without making a starter into 5G. Absolutely visible activity within 12 hours.

 

[ba-brewer]

kegged my first batch with wlp075 yesterday, an IPA mashed at 150 with 5% crystal and 5% corn sugar, 9days 1056 down to 1010 82%atten. Looks about like I what I got a few years ago.

 

[whovous]

I used a starter, pitched into 1.047 wort, set the Fermostat at 70F and left town for a week. My probe was taped under insulation on the outside of the fermentation chamber, so my actual average fermentation temp was doubtless a bit over 70F. When I measured it a week later it was right on 1.005, so I am pretty sure it is done. 89%, right? I will probably let it rest until this weekend and then keg it when I have a bigger brew ready for the yeast cake.

Oh, not even the slightest hint of apple smell in the final product.

 

[brewswithshoes]

Have to jump back in to say KUDOS to White Labs. I passed them the info on my failed starter attempt with the original shipment. Long story short they overnighted (from Cali to FLA) a new vial (packaged very well too) and it arrived today before lunch with the ice pack & yeast still cool.

I really appreciate the great customer service on making this right & looking forward to brewing up a Galaxy Smash with it this weekend.

 

[Nagorg]

I have to say that I'm not impressed with the fermentation so far. Only down to 1.031 from 1.067 after 4 days. Its still dropping though and I'm okay with slow as long as it finishes. But at this rate I'd be lying if I said I wasn't concerned of a stall.

I had planned to ferment at 67. Raised to 68 yesterday due to the slow progress and it appears to have helped a tiny bit. Stepping up to 69 now and may continue to ramp up to ~72 a day at a time until it finishes or stalls...

:|

 

[smata67]

I was at 1.026 at Day 5 with no airlock activity (and believe me, I run a tight bucket) after vigorous airlock activity at 12 hours after pitching and through Day 4 or so. At Day 5 things were dead, I began stirring a few times day which helped, but not much, a point or two. At Day 8 I pitched 3 oz of corn sugar and some yeast energizer and continued stirring. At Day 13 my airlock is dead, but I'm now down to 1.019. At a 1.070 starting gravity and now at 1.019, I'm at 72% attenuation, could be worse. I don't think this is going any further, no activity whatsoever. I will wait a week and bottle. Suggest you start stirring and give things a boost with some corn sugar and energizer. The only thing unusual about this all is that my starter and Day 1 off gassing did smell strongly of green apples/cider. But that subsided and is entirely gone. Did I underpitch? Can't say. I got a strong fermentation and 2" krausen. Vial smelled good when it arrived, though temps were in the mid 90s the previous week and vial took 5 days to arrive. By the way, its been at 75F or so since things slowed down on Day 4, with initial fermentation Day 1- Day 4 at a controlled 68F. I pitched at 82F.

 

[whovous]

I have to say that I'm not impressed with the fermentation so far. Only down to 1.031 from 1.067 after 4 days. Its still dropping though and I'm okay with slow as long as it finishes. But at this rate I'd be lying if I said I wasn't concerned of a stall.

I had planned to ferment at 67. Raised to 68 yesterday due to the slow progress and it appears to have helped a tiny bit. Stepping up to 69 now and may continue to ramp up to ~72 a day at a time until it finishes or stalls...

:|

View attachment 634998

I think it is time to add some US-05 to get this ferment unstuck. It is also time to chat with White Labs about sending a replacement. They've been very good about that with a number of posters here, including your humble narrator.

 

[whovous]

I was at 1.026 at Day 5 with no airlock activity (and believe me, I run a tight bucket) after vigorous airlock activity at 12 hours after pitching and through Day 4 or so. At Day 5 things were dead, I began stirring a few times day which helped, but not much, a point or two. At Day 8 I pitched 3 oz of corn sugar and some yeast energizer and continued stirring. At Day 13 my airlock is dead, but I'm now down to 1.019. At a 1.070 starting gravity and now at 1.019, I'm at 72% attenuation, could be worse. I don't think this is going any further, no activity whatsoever. I will wait a week and bottle. Suggest you start stirring and give things a boost with some corn sugar and energizer. The only thing unusual about this all is that my starter and Day 1 off gassing did smell strongly of green apples/cider. But that subsided and is entirely gone. Did I underpitch? Can't say. I got a strong fermentation and 2" krausen. Vial smelled good when it arrived, though temps were in the mid 90s the previous week and vial took 5 days to arrive. By the way, its been at 75F or so since things slowed down on Day 4, with initial fermentation Day 1- Day 4 at a controlled 68F. I pitched at 82F.

72% is not terrible, but White projects 75-80 and I just got 89% with a beer that started at 1.047. Consider asking White for a replacement, as what you got from that pitch is certainly not what we were all led to expect.

 

[kingmatt]

I was at 1.026 at Day 5 with no airlock activity (and believe me, I run a tight bucket) after vigorous airlock activity at 12 hours after pitching and through Day 4 or so. At Day 5 things were dead, I began stirring a few times day which helped, but not much, a point or two. At Day 8 I pitched 3 oz of corn sugar and some yeast energizer and continued stirring. At Day 13 my airlock is dead, but I'm now down to 1.019. At a 1.070 starting gravity and now at 1.019, I'm at 72% attenuation, could be worse. I don't think this is going any further, no activity whatsoever. I will wait a week and bottle. Suggest you start stirring and give things a boost with some corn sugar and energizer. The only thing unusual about this all is that my starter and Day 1 off gassing did smell strongly of green apples/cider. But that subsided and is entirely gone. Did I underpitch? Can't say. I got a strong fermentation and 2" krausen. Vial smelled good when it arrived, though temps were in the mid 90s the previous week and vial took 5 days to arrive. By the way, its been at 75F or so since things slowed down on Day 4, with initial fermentation Day 1- Day 4 at a controlled 68F. I pitched at 82F.

This is my fear with the yeast. I find it hard to believe that spending multiple days 20°+ above their optimal temp won't negatively affect fermentation, even with a starter.

 

[ba-brewer]

I split my initial starter and a build a second started to use on a lower gravity mildly hopped beer to use for repitching yeast.
I will probably keg that beer tomorrow(9 day ferment) so I don't have final numbers yet just quick samples with a refractometer.

97% base malt(GW 2row and Maris Otter) and 3% corn sugar. 1048 starting gravity, mashed at 152. Fermented Temp 68F first 4 days, 70F until complete. I did swirl the fermenter a few times a day up until day 4. ​

Pitched the yeast and it took 18hrs to get rolling(constant 1 sec bubbles), about 60hrs post pitch it was down to 1013.7, 84hr post pitch down to 1013, 7 days post pitch down to 1012.3(measured yesterday).

The calculated refract gravities are normally a point or so higher than the final hydro reading so I am guessing it will finish about 1011 for just over 77% attenuation.

Even with swirling the wort was pretty clear in a couple days.

edit: Kegged after 10days of fermentation, FG = 1.011 for 77%Atten. Beer crystal clear without crashing, yeast cake very compact.

 

[Nagorg]

Defiantly near terminal for this WLP075 run; pretty disappointing I'd say. (1.028 after 5 days) I've brewed with this yeast before and while I didn't chart the progress I can say for sure that it finished much lower and certainly in less time. There is clearly something wrong with this batch from White Labs; not at all what I expected form this yeast.

I'll be contacting them about this and while they may send me more, it cant make up for this disappointment from time spent waiting since 10/2017, the effort for brew day in anticipation and ultimate failure to perform despite all efforts to avoid this.

While I still believe that this yeast has great potential based on prior experience, White Labs simply failed on the delivery this time around it seems. Looks like I'll have a Session IPA...

 

[Nagorg]

So, no response from WhiteLabs and thats probably a good thing at this point. Clearly I needed to RDWHAHB... I went went out of town for a few days and just checked things again.

This beer finished at 1.017 which is one point lower than what BeerSmith estimated interestingly... But I can say that this yeast took the same recipe down to 1.010 before. There is a key difference between the two sessions though which makes sense. This beer was mashed at ~156-157 and finished at 1.017 while the 1.010 beer was mashed at 152.

So there you have it... It did seem slow but thats okay like I said. Now, time to dry hop, keg and carb... Cant wait to try this!

 

[Beer-lord]

@Nagorg, I may have missed it but did you oxygenate when you went into the fermenter? I know you shouldn't 'have to' but my brother just did a Firestone Wookie type beer 2 1/2 weeks ago and we mashed at 154 and it took off well and was pretty much at terminal in 8 days. He's only going the full 3 weeks because he's waiting for a free keg but in my use of this yeast, I did find it not always perfect in its FG but no matter what, it always produced beer I was crazy about.

 

[Nagorg]

did you oxygenate when you went into the fermenter?

Yes, I did oxygenate prior to pitching. I also added yeast nutrient in the last 15 minutes of the boil.

 

[whovous]

@Nagorg, you say BeerSmith estimated an FG of 1.018. Did you find a profile of WLP075 or did you create one?

 

[Nagorg]

Did you find a profile of WLP075 or did you create one?

I created one.

 

[brewswithshoes]

Per White Labs it says Hansen has attenuation matching San Diego Super, so you could use that in BS too

 

[whovous]

Strangely enough, that was exactly what I did. Wish I could say I did it because of what White Labs said, but that would be less than honest.

 

[Nagorg]

... I used this info for the Yeast profile in BeerSmith:

https://www.whitelabs.com/yeast-bank/wlp075-hansen-ale-yeast-blend

 

[Nagorg]

.. Alright, this beats anything I've seen since I've been brewing. Honestly, I've only started charting fermentation progress in the last year so that's not saying a lot but still... The gravity has continued to slowly fall, even at day 15... I started my dry hop tonight and took a sample.. Surprisingly its dropped 3 points over the last 3 days and 4 points since I last posted a reading.

Anyone had such a slow ferment before? I know it s"done when its done" but geez...

 

[ba-brewer]

WLP076 Old Sonoma Ale Yeast takes off fast then crawls to a finish for me.

 

[smata67]

After stalling out at 1.026 on about the 10 day mark, I began stirring and added 3 oz of corn sugar which immediately jump started things again, with the airlock very active for about 2 days before going to 1.019 and then abruptly stopping. There it sat for a week until bottling at which time there was an intense fruity aroma coming from the batch, reminded me of S04, not what I was looking for in this beer. So much for clean and high attenuation! I got 72% after the extra work. Tastes good, though. This was an all extract brew with MoreBeer LME, which I now realize doesn’t end up with the most fermentable of worts, I looked back at the other two times I used it with S05 and S04 and both also finished at 1.019, though neither stalled before getting there. I don’t usually do all extract, so lesson learned for the future, add grains or sugar to lower finish gravity.

So my theory as to what happened here is that for some reason my yeast batch ended up with a larger proportion of the English strain, this being a blend. The yeast in the vial was very clumpy, it fell out very quickly, and had strong fruity aromas throughout fermentation and prior to bottling. Attenuation was on the low side. I did get fairly vigorous airlock activity at 12 hours after pitching and for the first 4 days, as well as a 3” krausen, so I’m guessing I did not underpitch, though that is also a possibility. The LME wasn’t helping things. I’ll probably keep the cake and use with beers where I want the English character.

 

[Beer-lord]

I gave my brother a vial of my Hansen yeast and he brewed a semi Wookie Jack clone. We kegged it Friday and it had an 81% attenuation. He didn't have any oxygen so we just shook the crap out the fermenter before adding the yeast. It was a bit slower than my past use though it was kegged on day 18.
Tasted awesome. First time with that recipe and it's blown us away.
I'll be using more Hansen this weekend for a small IPA.

 

[smata67]

"It has the attenuation of WLP090 San Diego Super Ale Yeast and the character of WLP007 Dry English Ale Yeast."

I'm thinking to myself, why not make my own blend with these two yeasts?

 

[Nagorg]

I'm thinking to myself, why not make my own blend with these two yeasts?

I have thought the same thing. But, that just describes notable characteristics. They also describe it as a "blend of many IPA strain favorites" which implies more than just those two. There is also a ratio to consider...

But, give it a shot and let us know what you think!