I just picked up a vial of whitelab's cream ale blend that i plan on brewing with in a week or so. has anyone had any experiences with this yeast that they care to share? one thing i am curious about is cold conditioning. i dont really have a set up to cold condition my beers at this point in time, how will this effect the final product?
wlp080 cream ale question
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I like cream ales because they have all the cleanness and clarity of lagers but without the bad parts (long cold conditioning period). I got sick of wasting expensive pale ales on people who don't appreciate hops so now people get a cream ale which has wider appeal and is cheap/easy/fast to make.
I cracked one open last night (80:20 2-row/rice with s-05), 2 weeks fermenting, 3 weeks bottle conditioning and 8 hours in the fridge. It was amazing, tastes just like a clean lager. Clarity wasn't perfect but it would be with a few more days in the fridge.
I don't have any experience with that yeast but I would say you are good if you can give the bottles a bit of time in the fridge prior to drinking. Make sure you ferment cool for clean flavours, cold crash and/or add finings if you can for clarity, but no need to bother with any sort of lagering or bulk-conditioning in my opinion.
I cracked one open last night (80:20 2-row/rice with s-05), 2 weeks fermenting, 3 weeks bottle conditioning and 8 hours in the fridge. It was amazing, tastes just like a clean lager. Clarity wasn't perfect but it would be with a few more days in the fridge.
I don't have any experience with that yeast but I would say you are good if you can give the bottles a bit of time in the fridge prior to drinking. Make sure you ferment cool for clean flavours, cold crash and/or add finings if you can for clarity, but no need to bother with any sort of lagering or bulk-conditioning in my opinion.
I just used wlp080 for a cream ale.
Majority 2-row, 12% flaked corn, a little flaked oats and carafoam.
Fermented at 65 F for 5 days, then rose to 69 to finish. Mine finished at 1.006. (I then cold crashed for 2 days to carbonate).
Very crisp beer, and pretty clean I'd say, even though its still pretty young in the bottles. No complaints from it. Although I might try a different yeast in the same cream ale recipe next time to do a side by side comparison.
Majority 2-row, 12% flaked corn, a little flaked oats and carafoam.
Fermented at 65 F for 5 days, then rose to 69 to finish. Mine finished at 1.006. (I then cold crashed for 2 days to carbonate).
Very crisp beer, and pretty clean I'd say, even though its still pretty young in the bottles. No complaints from it. Although I might try a different yeast in the same cream ale recipe next time to do a side by side comparison.
MagicRat
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I have used this yeast for the "cream of the crop" recipe. The result was a really nice, refreshing lager-like character but it was very hazy. My beers are usually somewhat hazy because I don't care about clarity all that much. This one was just more so and I wonder if it had to do with having to sub QuickGrits for flaked corn. But I liked the beer a lot!
