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Lele

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Greetings from Italy
What yeast do you recommend for a very complex and malty Imperial Stout of 12% ABV? I'm uncertain especially between WLP 002, 028, 090 or 007. What are the differences in flavor of these yeasts?
Thanks
 
Depends on what residual sweetness you want on the beer. I found the WLP 007 flocks out HARD and left the beer sweeter than I wanted. Not sure if you have considered TYB Dry Belgian, but I did a batch with the Yeast Bays Dry Belgian for a milk stout and it worked awesome. Dried the beer out, then the lactose was able to shine.
 
Unfortunately it's hard for me to buy The Yeast Bay where I live.

Depends on what residual sweetness you want on the beer.

I'd like a Fg of 1025 or even 1030. Is WLP007 good in your opinion, with an adeguate mash temp?
 
What is your planned OG? I would personally go with the WLP 090 or WLP 007 as if you finish too sweet then getting the final gravity lower can be difficult even if pitching another yeast. If you end up too dry you can always back sweeten with lactose which is a yummy addition to a stout.
 
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In all honesty with a big beer like that you wont taste the difference in yeasts. I would go by potential attenuation and mash up or down to get the body you want. Flavor from the grains will overpower the yeast nuances. Just pick what seems to fit your plan for FG.
 
I use 007 in my RIS. If I were doing a single infusion, I’d do 149 for 90 minutes. That brings my recipe down in the .016 range. I start fermentation at 65 for 24hrs. I then raise it to 68 for 72, then raise to 72 for the remainder. It is usually finished in 6-7 days. I cold crash for 48 hrs and package.
 
I use 007 in my RIS. If I were doing a single infusion, I’d do 149 for 90 minutes. That brings my recipe down in the .016 range.

I'd like a FG of 1.025 or even 1.030 (my planned OG is 1.114). In your opinion, is it possible to obtain this high FG with 007 if I use high mash temp (154-155)?
 
I really like wl007. Great attention, flocs the yeast well at the end which can help head retention. Since it’s an imperial you’re most likely using quite a bit of dark malts so it’s tough to get a noticeable ester profile to show, so I would pick the yeast based on the mouthfeel your trying to achieve.
 
Greetings from Italy
What yeast do you recommend for a very complex and malty Imperial Stout of 12% ABV? I'm uncertain especially between WLP 002, 028, 090 or 007. What are the differences in flavor of these yeasts?

Just as a comment, it would help if you mention Italy in your profile, it makes it easier for everyone. FWIW if you want an EU (for now...) source of some of the rarer US yeast companies, try eg BrewUK (they seem to have stopped doing Giga and Imperial but still do WL, Wyeast, Yeast Bay and Omega), Malt Miller (WL, Wyeast, Yeast Bay, Imperial) and Brewstore (WL & Omega). And at the moment Hop & Grape has a few Brewlab slants.

WLP090 is a derivative of the Chico family (US-05/001/1056) so lacks character for British style beers. But 12% is at the upper limits of what most British yeast are comfortable with. So my recommendation for this kind of thing would be WLP540 Abbey IV which despite the name is a non-phenolic British yeast, but allegedly it comes from Rochefort so has adapted to high-alcohol dark beers. So it should ferment your beer without too much trouble, whilst giving you some nice fruit character. Wyeast 1762 is meant to share the same origin but is listed as having lower ABV tolerance.
 
Just as a comment, it would help if you mention Italy in your profile, it makes it easier for everyone

Thanks, I've just done it :)

So my recommendation for this kind of thing would be WLP540 Abbey IV which despite the name is a non-phenolic British yeast

Thanks for the tip. Just three questions:
1) Do you think that, in my case 540 is even better than 007? If you do, why?
2) What ferment temperature for 540 for a Russian Imperial Stout?
3) I'd like a FG of 1025 or 1030. A mash temp of 154-156 is OK in your opinion, or 540 is too attenuative?
 
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540 has better alcohol tolerance, so will be less stressed by the high ABV. Which makes for a less stressful fermentation for the brewer. And while I've not used 007 that high, 540 is just a nice yeast. And Rochefort 10 is one of my favourite beers.... :)

Typical British practice for a RIS would be to pitch low (<15C) and then let it free rise to 20-22C. Don't try to bully the yeast, trying to control the temperature too much will stress the yeast more than necessary.

Comfort Zone recently linked to a presentation on high-ABV fermentation which may be useful, also see Ron Pattinson's work on historical RIS.
 
I have no idea how I just found this thread now, but Northern_Brewer is dead on with WLP540 for big, dark, malty beers.
Any updates on how this went?
 
I'll defer to the others on the initial yeast but I do have a recommendation for bottling yeast. I made "Dragons Silk" from Northern Brewer and at bottling it was about 9.7% ABV. It came out completely flat. A few months later while bottling a Belgian Quad that was about 9.5% ABV I bottled with CBC-1 yeast. This did not come out super carbonated but it was much better than the Imperial Stout. So, I'd recommend some bottling yeast like CBC-1. I currently have another batch of Dragons Silk in secondary and plan to bottle that with CBC-1. Some notes on the math are below.

There are 11 grams and the manufacturer recommends 0.1g/L. You're supposed to dissolve the 11 grams in 100 mL of water. So, if 0.1g is good for one liter, 11 grams is good for 110 liters. 33.8 ounces to a liter so your 100 mL is good for 3719 ounces, or 310 twelve oz bottles. One bottle therefore needs 100 mL/310 or 0.322 mL of the CBC-1 water solution. I happened to have some little droppers with mL markers on them so I just put about a third of a mL in each bottle before filling it. I could have just calculated how much I needed for the whole batch and mixed it in before bottling but I wanted to ensure uniform consistency within each bottle.
 
I'll defer to the others on the initial yeast but I do have a recommendation for bottling yeast. I made "Dragons Silk" from Northern Brewer and at bottling it was about 9.7% ABV. It came out completely flat. A few months later while bottling a Belgian Quad that was about 9.5% ABV I bottled with CBC-1 yeast. This did not come out super carbonated but it was much better than the Imperial Stout. So, I'd recommend some bottling yeast like CBC-1. I currently have another batch of Dragons Silk in secondary and plan to bottle that with CBC-1. Some notes on the math are below.

There are 11 grams and the manufacturer recommends 0.1g/L. You're supposed to dissolve the 11 grams in 100 mL of water. So, if 0.1g is good for one liter, 11 grams is good for 110 liters. 33.8 ounces to a liter so your 100 mL is good for 3719 ounces, or 310 twelve oz bottles. One bottle therefore needs 100 mL/310 or 0.322 mL of the CBC-1 water solution. I happened to have some little droppers with mL markers on them so I just put about a third of a mL in each bottle before filling it. I could have just calculated how much I needed for the whole batch and mixed it in before bottling but I wanted to ensure uniform consistency within each bottle.
Why are the beers coming out flat or pourly carbed. There should be plenty of yeast left in suspension in your stouts to eat the priming sugar. I just complete a 11.3 abv imperial coffee stout and after Aging 21 days it still carbed bottles to the level I was going for.
 
Yeah, I'm not sure why a beer at under 10% isn't carbing. It might take a little longer but that should be no problem for the majority of yeasts used for that style. Curious.
 
Why are the beers coming out flat or pourly carbed. There should be plenty of yeast left in suspension in your stouts to eat the priming sugar. I just complete a 11.3 abv imperial coffee stout and after Aging 21 days it still carbed bottles to the level I was going for.

I’d guess underpitching lead to stressed yeast that didn’t referment in the bottle.
 
Why are the beers coming out flat or pourly carbed. There should be plenty of yeast left in suspension in your stouts to eat the priming sugar. I just complete a 11.3 abv imperial coffee stout and after Aging 21 days it still carbed bottles to the level I was going for.
Fair, it may have had more to do with how long secondary fermentation was (3 months), I think that is long enough for yeast to fall out of suspension.
 
I guess but he also stated he added conditioning yeast at time of bottling
 
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