I'm planning to brew a super dry, clean very hoppy DIPA and am trying to figure out a good yeast to use that will not impart any additional flavor and accentuate the hoppyness in the beer. Something that has very high attenuation as well.
Can you guys recommend a good yeast for this purpose? I'm new-ish to brewing and just starting to learn about the different strains of yeast. Would WLP090- San Diego Super Yeast be a good choice? Maybe good ol' WLP001 will suffice?
WLP001 makes up a huge %age of White Labs production and for many brewers it's the only member of the Chico family they've ever used. So that's what they'll recommend just out of familiarity, but it doesn't necessarily mean that it's the best one for the job. Heck, most people will say that WLP001 and Wyeast 1056 are the same strain, when closer inspection of
both DNA and
brewing performance, will show that they're not.
So it's worth poking around the other subfamilies of the Chico group, which all do things slightly differently and may be "better" for your purposes. WLP090 San Diego is a good example, you may not mind a bit less temperature flexibility in return for better flocculation than WLP001. The Pacman group that originated at Rogue also drop better than WLP001 - the Wyeast 1764 version is a rare PC release whereas A18 Joystick seems to be a core strain for Imperial. It's also worth mentioning that Wyeast 1217 is currently a Q1 seasonal release, allegedly from Stone and another one that's easier to work with than WLP001. Imperial's seasonal A30 Corporate is
another derivative used at Elysian.
They're all broadly similar in that they're not going to start making English-style beer, they're all clean and pretty well attenuating, but at the same time they all have subtle differences.
I'd also question the basic premise of your question - a super clean yeast may not give you the best DIPA. If you take the example of Cloudwater, they use "British" yeasts from Conan to the decades-old multistrain from Lees to make DIPAs that took them last year to #2 on Ratebeer behind Hill Farmstead. But they obsess over yeast health - you can see the evolution of their thinking in the spreadsheet linked
from this blog post.
Overpitching and a swift fermentation can dramatically
increase the "cleanness" of the yeast's contribution, while also increasing some hop-derived compounds like geranyl isobutanoate.
I've never heard of using more than one yeast. What is the point?
Most traditional British breweries use multistrains up until at least the 1970s, and some still do, as a way of getting the best of both worlds. Typically a yeast that drops well won't attenuate well, but if you mix a yeast that drops well with one that attenuates well, you'll get good attenuation and the former will take out the latter when it drops. It also allows you to use a characterful yeast like Windsor with a cleaner but higher attenuating yeast like Nottingham, or to introduce additional complexity in the flavour by using a S-04/T-58/WB-06 like it seems
Tree House use(d) for Julius.
