White Labs WLP005 is not the complete culture

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YeastWhisperer

White Labs WLP005 is not the complete culture

Post by YeastWhisperer » Fri May 01, 2015 7:02 pm

I have known for some time that WLP005 is not the complete Ringwood culture. However, the audio of Chris White explaining the strain confirms that he only obtained the attenuative strain. The top-cropping strain is missing.

http://www.whitelabs.com/sites/default/ ... wlp005.mp3

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Re: White Labs WLP005 is not the complete culture

Post by MTW » Sat May 02, 2015 8:03 am

Yes, I'd heard that clip and when I used it for the first time recently, it behaved just as described.
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Re: White Labs WLP005 is not the complete culture

Post by kebabman » Sun May 03, 2015 6:08 pm

Like the strain wyeast 1469 is not the true Timothy Taylor's yeast as TT's yeast is a multi strain.

Graham

Re: White Labs WLP005 is not the complete culture

Post by Graham » Sun May 03, 2015 8:53 pm

It seems to me that Chris White is promoting snake oil here. He sells a single cell isolate of the Ringwood multi-strain yeast, which, of course, isn't authentic Ringwood yeast. One of the major problems with yeast that has been commercially propagated on a medium that it is not accustomed to is that it loses its top-working characteristic. Top-working yeast is naturally buoyant. its cell shape and density is such that it enables it to float naturally - like a boat. A yeast that is propagated on glucose with forced saturated oxygen, rather than wort with natural aeration, will cause the cell's shape and density to change. One of the advantages of what I call a "northern yeast", of which Ringwood is an example, is that it requires regular rousing and re-aeration to maintain its fermentive power. It is what is known as a semi-aerobic yeast. Once the brewer stops rousing, fermentation slows down enormously - almost stops. This enables the brewer to halt fermentation at any point he likes and produce a beer with any degree of rough sweetness that he desires. Which is why northern brewers preferred the stuff.

I have often been criticised for not recommending an appropriate yeast for the recipes in Brew Your Own. This was a deliberate policy because, at that time, I had never encountered a liquid, or dried, yeast that performed true to type when compared to the stuff sourced from any traditional regional brewery. The only stuff that I did not have a serious issue with were the slants from Brewlab.

Although it is true that the move to conical fermentors have clouded the landscape somewhat, it is wrong for Chris White to blame conicals for the deficiencies in the so-called Ringwood yeast that he supplies. In the days when I had a close association with Ringwood brewery, they were using traditional open fermentors. I doubt very much if they are using conicals today - They would not have anywhere to put them, for one thing.

YeastWhisperer

Re: White Labs WLP005 is not the complete culture

Post by YeastWhisperer » Mon May 04, 2015 1:21 am

All of the Peter Austin systems that Alan Pugsley installed here in the United States use/used traditional open fermentation coupled with real Ringwood. They all use/used the aeration/rousing device that resembles a shower head. I acquired Ringwood via a hydrometer sample in late 1994 from a defunct brewery that Alan Pugsley built in Maryland in 1989. I was unaware that Ringwood was a multi-strain culture until I attempted to brew with my isolates. Fearing that I would never get another shot at obtaining the culture, I transferred several colonies from my plate to different slants. The original intent was to have backup slants. Luckily, I obtained both of the two major strains in the culture. After brewing two different batches of beer using the same basic recipe with starters propagated from different slants and getting two very different beers, it dawned on me that I was dealing with more than one strain. I combined starters made from the known slants, and voilà, real Ringwood performance and flavor.

The highly flocculent strain is an under-attentuating butterscotch bomb producer when used as a pure culture. It has high O2 demands. The attentuative strain is much less flocculent. In fact, the sediment is relatively easy to disturb. Unlike the mess that Adnams has to manage, Ringwood remains relatively stable under re-use. The strains go together like peanut butter and jelly.

With that said, I am not certain that Oliver's Brewery in Baltimore, Maryland still uses a Peter Austin system because they moved to a larger facility; however, Oliver's brewed with one for over twenty years.

Here's time-lapsed video of Ironman Pale Ale fermenting in Peter Austin-designed open fermentation vessel:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGIThQ7w0ls

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Re: White Labs WLP005 is not the complete culture

Post by IPA » Mon May 04, 2015 2:06 pm

Graham said
A yeast that is propagated on glucose with forced saturated oxygen, rather than wort with natural aeration, will cause the cell's shape and density to change
I have noticed that yeast pitched into a starter made up with DME always performs differently to when it is finally pitched into the wort. Would it be beneficial to prepare the starter with wort that had been mashed and stored in 2 litre bottles in the freezer and defrosted and boiled when required for a starter?
It would certainly be more economic. I am talking about a wort the same as the one for the beer being fermented.
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Re: White Labs WLP005 is not the complete culture

Post by Graham » Mon May 04, 2015 5:36 pm

IPA wrote: I have noticed that yeast pitched into a starter made up with DME always performs differently to when it is finally pitched into the wort. Would it be beneficial to prepare the starter with wort that had been mashed and stored in 2 litre bottles in the freezer and defrosted and boiled when required for a starter?
It would certainly be more economic. I am talking about a wort the same as the one for the beer being fermented.
In my view, malt extract should be the equivalent of an ex-mash tun wort, and should not make any difference in theory. I suspect that many malt extracts available to us do not match an ex-brewery wort, and it would be to the advantage of the home brewing fraternity to identify an extract that does match a proper wort and make the fraternity-at-large aware of it. I have always been suspicious of dried malt extract anyway, but the stuff is just too damn convenient to ignore for this application.

However conditions are generally quite different within a starter inasmuch as we are focusing on growth rather than fermentation proper and the evolved CO2 is probably much less than during normal fermentation. With many yeasts It is the copious CO2 evolving that carries it to the surface and produces the foam.

I have noticed with some yeasts that even the slightest bit of CO2 back-pressure, even that generated by fitting an airlock, is sufficient to to cause the yeast to visibly behave differently, by sometimes not producing much of a yeast head.

YeastWhisperer

Re: White Labs WLP005 is not the complete culture

Post by YeastWhisperer » Mon May 04, 2015 7:14 pm

I am fairly certain that Wyeast and White Labs use a fortified malt-based medium. Wyeast and White Labs also use anaerobic batch propagation. Now, the dry yeast companies are a completely different story. The dry yeast companies use a medium that is molasses-based (a.k.a. black treacle). Molasses is mostly sucrose. Sucrose is composed of a glucose molecule bound to a fructose molecule via a glycosidic bond whereas maltose is a two glucose molecules bound by a glycosidic bond. Yeast cells excrete maltase to break the glycosidic bond in maltose whereas they excrete invertase to split the glycosidic bond in sucrose.

One of the reasons why one wants to propagate yeast in malt sugar is because continuous propagation in sucrose will put selective pressure on the culture. Cells that readily digest sucrose may be selected over those that readily digest maltose, resulting in the culture possibly losing its ability to digest maltose. The problem with aerobic propagation is that it also puts selective pressure on the culture because the carbon source (sugar is carbon bound to water) is consumed via the respirative metabolic pathway; hence, yeast cells that are efficient at consuming carbon via the respirative metabolic pathway may be selected over those that are efficient at consuming carbon via the fermentative metabolic pathway.


For those who do not know, yeast cells have two metabolic pathways. One metabolic pathway is known as the respirative (aerobic) metabolic pathway. The other metabolic pathway is known as the fermentative (anaerobic) metabolic pathway. All yeast biomass growth occurs fermentatively in beer wort due to something known as the Crabtree effect. Basically, yeast cells consume carbon via the fermentative metabolic pathway, even in the presence of O2, if the glucose level in a solution is above the Crabtree threshold, which is 0.3%. The average extract from a mash is approximately 14% glucose; hence, this threshold is exceeded any time the wort gravity exceeds around 2% w/v (1.008).

Here's the math:

0.02 (solution density) x 0.14 (percentage of extract that is glucose) x 100 = 0.28% glucose in solution

What yeast cells do in the presence of O2 in beer wort is shunt a small percentage of the carbon source to the respirative metabolic pathway for the production of ergosterol and unsaturated fatty acids (UFA). Ergosterol and UFAs make the cell plasma membrane more pliable, which, in turn, allows for the passage of nutrients into cell and waste products out of the cell. The Ergosterol and UFA reserves that are synthesized by the mother cells during the lag phase are shared with all of their daughter cells during fermentation, which why we want to pitch at high krausen instead of waiting until a starter has fermented out and the cells have reached quiescence. High krausen occurs when the cell count reaches its maximum. From that point forward, all reproduction is for dead cell replacement only (i.e., yeast cell populations are self-regulating). If we pitch at high krausen, we avoid the sterol and UFA depletion that occurs as a result of cellular replacement, which, in turn, lowers the dissolved O2 load upon pitching. Pitching at high krausen also avoids having to wait for the cells to reverse a morphological change that occurs at the end of fermentation. Yeast cells that have reached a quiescent state at the end of fermentation have undergone a cellular change where their cell walls thicken in preparation for hard times. Cell wall thickening is a survival mechanism.

With respect to propagating yeast in wort made from DME, well, malt extract often tends to have lower free amino nitrogen (FAN) levels than freshly-prepared wort. The FAN content of the solution can be boosted via the addition of diammonium phosphate (DAP), which is a nitrogen source. DAP is basically yeast fertilizer (yeasts are single-cell plants). It is one of the compounds that are used to make fortified wort. I need to weigh the amount that I use because a U.S. teaspoon is smaller than a UK teaspoon. I usually add one 1/4 U.S. teaspoon of DAP per liter to all of my starters.

Rkzi

Re: White Labs WLP005 is not the complete culture

Post by Rkzi » Fri Jan 06, 2017 2:14 pm

Has anyone compared WLP005 and wy1187? Both are supposedly ringwood, but the white labs strain ferments from the bottom while the wyeast strain is supposedly a top cropper. However the flocculation and attenuation of both seem similar.

McMullan

Re: White Labs WLP005 is not the complete culture

Post by McMullan » Fri Jan 06, 2017 3:28 pm

Yes, I have. They are very different. There are a lot of highly floccing strains with a similar attenuation as WLP005 and WY1187.

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Re: White Labs WLP005 is not the complete culture

Post by orlando » Fri Jan 06, 2017 4:14 pm

YeastWhisperer wrote: The Ergosterol and UFA reserves that are synthesized by the mother cells during the lag phase are shared with all of their daughter cells during fermentation, which why we want to pitch at high krausen instead of waiting until a starter has fermented out and the cells have reached quiescence.
This is sometime ago but hopefully yo are stil monitoring these threads. My question is that a lot of home brewers like to chill their starter and decant off the spent wort. If you do this at high krausen are you still going to gain the benefits or would you advocate pitching the whole starter? I tend to avoid the latter as it can become quite a big percentage of your standard brew length, my fear being it will have a flavour effect.
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Re: White Labs WLP005 is not the complete culture

Post by MTW » Fri Jan 06, 2017 5:20 pm

orlando wrote:
YeastWhisperer wrote: The Ergosterol and UFA reserves that are synthesized by the mother cells during the lag phase are shared with all of their daughter cells during fermentation, which why we want to pitch at high krausen instead of waiting until a starter has fermented out and the cells have reached quiescence.
This is sometime ago but hopefully yo are stil monitoring these threads. My question is that a lot of home brewers like to chill their starter and decant off the spent wort. If you do this at high krausen are you still going to gain the benefits or would you advocate pitching the whole starter? I tend to avoid the latter as it can become quite a big percentage of your standard brew length, my fear being it will have a flavour effect.
He partly answers that (or at least seems to suggest it as an option, with reservations that the yeast will actually drop) on the second page of the Shaken Not Stirred thread, some way down (under a requoted image):

viewtopic.php?f=12&t=70926&start=15
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Rkzi

Re: White Labs WLP005 is not the complete culture

Post by Rkzi » Fri Jan 06, 2017 7:57 pm

[quote="McMullan"]Yes, I have. They are very different. There are a lot of highly floccing strains with a similar attenuation as WLP005 and WY1187.[/quote]

Interesting, what kind of differences did you find? I was just wondering if these could be the two strains of the original ringwood multistrain, but since the attenuation and flocculation characters are similar this seems to not be the case.

McMullan

Re: White Labs WLP005 is not the complete cultur

Post by McMullan » Fri Jan 06, 2017 11:50 pm

In terms of flavour, there is a big difference. Fermentation wise, they are very similar. My guess is WLP005 is a single strain whereas WY1187 is dual strain. Why not try both and decide which one you prefer? WY1187 has a lot more character, which not everyone appreciates. WLP005 is nice, but relatively bland.

Rkzi

Re: White Labs WLP005 is not the complete culture

Post by Rkzi » Sat Jan 07, 2017 12:33 am

Thanks for sharing your observations! I thought that both of them are single-strain isolates, and that the "real" ringwood is not available for homebrewers unless cultured from bottle. Supposed ringwood breweries can be found from here: http://www.pugsleybrewing.com/pugsleysinstallations.php , interestingly the list contains Orkney brewery whose yeast usage was discussed in this thread: viewtopic.php?f=12&t=57417&hilit=orkney (Ringwood was also briefly mentioned on the last page of the thread).

My homebrew shop carries only wyeast, but of course I could order some WLP005 for comparison. I had heard from an other homebrewing forum that despite both of these strains are derived from the Ringwood multistrain, they are not really the same yeast, which you now confirmed. I'm quite new to the hobby, being brewing for only one year, and this far I have brewed only one batch with 1187 which sadly failed due to other reasons (too much bramling cross hops or possibly infection...), so I did not get a good impression of the flavours this strain provides. Hopefully I can soon correct that mistake. Albeit being a beginner, I'm interested in the origins and characteristics of different yeast strains, especially English ones, and this forum seems to have most knowledge about them so I decided to join here.

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