Fantastic, thanks, f00b4r. Met him on his introduction page but of course he's too humble to let us know! Will very much look forward to hearing more from him.
Wonderful to know. Thanks again.
Wonderful to know. Thanks again.
I would class Black Sheep Yeast, HH, as a medium to good flocculator, certainly not one to worry about, just skim the krausen, put on the lid and cool it a little. It's hard to think such yeasts would be poor flocculators by observation.
After using what I believe to be the Timothy Taylor strain I was surprised attenuative Black Sheep was. While TT might struggle to 70% attenuation, TT, BS would be head to 80%.
If you want a true Yorkshire Square yeast, you might try asking alison at Brewlab if they can supply that from a particular brewery that interests you.
https://www.brewlab.co.uk/services/home-brew-yeast
Just to say, 2 vials of HH arrived from Britain and they're tucked away in the cooler. The vial says "best before" May 2018, but I hope I'm up and running much sooner. Regardless, very excited and I'll maintain slants to keep it all going strong.
Speaking of which, in the absence of a hemacytometer, my plan is to propagate by slant - 10 ml 1020 - 100 ml 1020 - 1000 ml 1040; with all of these on stir plate. Then on to 10L, at 1040. Cool, decant, pitch into batch, which puts me in a 3.5-4.5X step. I'll have to figure it out from there because I don't brew often enough to harvest and repitch. Shame, because I'd prefer to work with yeast that have been through a few whole batch fermentations over propagating each time from slants or plates.
Just to say, 2 vials of HH arrived from Britain and they're tucked away in the cooler. The vial says "best before" May 2018, but I hope I'm up and running much sooner. Regardless, very excited and I'll maintain slants to keep it all going strong.
Speaking of which, in the absence of a hemacytometer, my plan is to propagate by slant - 10 ml 1020 - 100 ml 1020 - 1000 ml 1040; with all of these on stir plate. Then on to 10L, at 1040. Cool, decant, pitch into batch, which puts me in a 3.5-4.5X step. I'll have to figure it out from there because I don't brew often enough to harvest and repitch. Shame, because I'd prefer to work with yeast that have been through a few whole batch fermentations over propagating each time from slants or plates.
Just stumbled across this thread, cool stuff. That said, last year I got interested in Yorkshire fermentation methods and after some tinkering ended up using a small peristaltic pump to recirculate wort from the bottom of a bucket through the yeast head, during the early portion of fermentation. I first tried this with WLP037 but did not have any luck, as the yeast did not form a thick enough krausen. It worked well with WY1469. I ended up doing 2 beers with this process and the results were nice, although I can't say if it did things any better than a sanitized spoon and occasional stirring. I used plastic buckets and covered the top with cheesecloth.
The resulting beers attenuated more than expected (1.045-1.008) and had an improved mouthfeel. However, diacetyl levels were a touch higher than I prefer (I am highly sensitive to it) although that toffee-ish character is appropriate for Yorkshire beers. The increase in mouthfeel is probably due to increased diacetyl production.
I would be curious to hear how the Brewlab HH strain does for you. I have some banked, although it was in my early days of slanting and it never seemed that healthy. I've since accumulated a decent collection of UK strains, if people are interested in trading slants.
If it isn't this HH I was going to use the WLP 037, so that's great info., though I'm sorry it didn't work out for you. That's Timothy Taylor, ostensibly, IIRC? And that's good to know about WY 1469 because it was basically a tossup for me between the 37 and the 1469.
This may get labeled as heresy, but my view is that the pumpover/rousing of the yeast it to get the beer to ferment faster so they could make more beer with the existing equipment that was available.
That said, the old rule of thumb for rousing was to start pumping 18hrs after the start of fermentation and recirculate for 10 minutes, every 4 hours. That would happen during high krausen, or within ~3 days. Adding 02 after the aerobic phase increases diacetyl production. I am sure some of the 'Yorkshire' flavor is because of this process.
Victorian brewers put an immense amount of effort into 'cleansing' their fermenting beer of excess yeast and trub and the various fermentation systems (union, square, and dropping) achieve just that; while helping add 02 to the beer during the aerobic yeast phase.
That sould read "Victorian brewers in Burton and places with similar yeast" - the Burton brewers were brewing for export, so wanted high attenuation for stability purposes, so had to put up with poor-dropping yeast. Fuller's don't use such systems because they have a yeast that drops like a rock. But AIUI their yeast benefits from a rouse after 24-36h precisely to get some oxygen into the yeast cake, to ensure happy yeast and full attenuation.
I was taught that the system was originally devised as a means to achieve clarification of the beer while it was in the fermenter and to ensure complete fermentation when using dodgy ingredients.
My issue with the CYBI clones, is that they are essentially cloning old bottled beer, which is often pasteurized and showcases much more oxidation character than fresh draft product.
I'm not sure I completely buy the faster turn-round thing given you're talking about shaving the odd day off a total of a couple of weeks of fermentation/conditioning - it's significant extra complexity which would likely cost more than a extra tank or two. If you want throughput, you go for a tower.
I'm thinking the pump over shaves maybe a week or more off the process. I can't remember how long they fermented the CYBI clone version. 10 days? 2 weeks? Something like that
Has anyone ever seen a beer clearing while fermentaion is active? I haven't, but then again, I never really thought about it before. Once fermentation is finished, beer does settle, gets clear and can be drawn off.
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