White Labs WLP005 is not the complete culture

[Dennis King]

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.

Sorry to hear you had a problem with your first liquid yeast. I can strongly recommend WLP002 English yeast, the Fullers strain, a very forgiving yeast, drops like a stone with a great flavour profile.

[Rkzi]

Thanks for the recommendation, I've heard good things about that yeast. The supposed young's yeast (wyeast 1768) is going to be available soon so i might try that next since it's not always available. And i still have some ringwood in the fridge.

I don't really know what happened to the batch with ringwood, but atleast part of the problem was overhopping with bramling cross. The beer had really overpowering earthy, vinous, spicy and almost astringent notes and later developed into gushers with a gravity drop of few points. The batch made previous to that was made with wyeast 3711 which might have infected the latter one causing the gushing, or then it was just bottled too early, or infected by wild yeast. I still have few bottles left which i vented to release some pressure so i can see how it develops.

[McMullan]

If you are looking for 'Ringwood', you have found it in WY1187. It is very similar to the brewery strain, IMO. Pitch a 2L starter into 20L aerated wort and ferment open (without an airlock, cover bung hole loosely with foil or cling film) for a few days. Temperature control during active primary fermentation is recommended. It's a 'fruity' strain. Higher temperature can easily ruin the flavour profile. The 'butterscotch' is part of the profile, not a flaw associated with diacetyl. If brewed, fermented and conditioned well, you should be drinking a very nice British style ale.

+1 for WLP002, another great strain.

[McMullan]

Some reading for you, Rkzi, http://byo.com/stories/item/195-beer-overboard.

Gushers are caused by a bacterial infection. Some commercial craft brewers seem to get them quite often. I have had one or two myself, even in a keg, which was quite impressive.

[Rkzi]

Thanks for your input, I'm definitely giving this strain another go!

I'm not blaming Ringwood for my failed batch, although it has a "notorious" reputation. I'm not blaming bramling x either, I just used too much (I used it later in another beer as late hop with EKG and there it worked fine). I thought I had done my homework and pitched a 1 L starter at high-krausen into 10 L of aerated wort, aerated again after few hours, and then roused maybe once or twice a day by swirling the fv (I did not attempt an open fermentation though). I used a swamp cooler but did not dare to cool it too much since the notorious reputation of this strain is partly caused by tendency to stall, and partly by diacetyl production. I had heard that this strain was a fast fermenter, so looking at my notes I bottled after only one week of fermentation (this has worked for me with US-05 and S-04). I carbonated to 2 volumes of CO2, and after conditioning for maybe two months in room temp got gushers with a drop in gravity.

Now after doing some reading about these low-attenuating English strains, I might not attempt such a fast schedule anymore. Gushers or overcarbonation can be caused by many things (FG not reached, too much hop/yeast sediment, ...) of which only one is infection. Reading through homebrewing forums, english yeast strains such as WLP002 and windsor (maybe even ringwood?) seem to be more prone to overcarbonation than say US-05 or S-04. There's even a long thread about overcarbonation with WLP002/Wy1968 here: http://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=500408 , although most seem to use it without any problems. Reasons for low attenuation include high flocculation and poor or non-existent maltotriose utilization. Maybe some of these english strains keep chewing on those maltotrioses in the bottle although they seem to be finished fermenting. Or maybe they are just more prone to infection because they leave so many unused sugars in there. I guess no one knows the correct answer. I'm going to try the Danstar's London ESB in my next brew and I think it might behave similarly in this respect than Windsor, so I'll leave it in primary for few weeks atleast. By the way, I'm sorry about derailing the thread this far from the original subject

[MTW]

Sorry to hear you had a problem with your first liquid yeast. I can strongly recommend WLP002 English yeast, the Fullers strain, a very forgiving yeast, drops like a stone with a great flavour profile.

There's even a long thread about overcarbonation with WLP002/Wy1968 here: http://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=500408 , although most seem to use it without any problems. Reasons for low attenuation include high flocculation and poor or non-existent maltotriose utilization. Maybe some of these english strains keep chewing on those maltotrioses in the bottle although they seem to be finished fermenting. Or maybe they are just more prone to infection because they leave so many unused sugars in there.

There was a similar'Fuller's' over-carbonation thread on here too recently, to which I contributed. WLP002 does seem prone to it, whether for creeping attenuation itself in bottles, and/or for the fact that the lower attenuation does leave more for anything else around to chew through. Great flavour though. [I would be interested for any brief comment from Dennis or anyone who I know has used it more than me, whether they get long term stable bottled beer with it, including (importantly) when the FG is over (say) 1.014.]

For me, the one time I used WLP005, it was a pretty dull, almost bottom fermenting in appearance, attenuative strain, probably nothing like the Ringwood yeast people describe from the brewery, as noted before.

[McMullan]

Unless bottling too soon, there should be no issues with overcarbonation. If attenuation is creeping up, it is probably due to an infection.

[MTW]

Unless bottling too soon, there should be no issues with overcarbonation. If attenuation is creeping up, it is probably due to an infection.

...and when a good number of brewers tell me they've bottled high-FG beers with 002 and it's been stable in long term storage, I may yet accept that, and re-examine my usually sound practices with the range of other strains I've used without that issue.

[McMullan]

The Fuller's strain does seem strange, after reading the linked thread. I've only kegged beer fermented with it. I'll bottle some when I next use it and update the other thread.

[Dennis King]

There was a similar'Fuller's' over-carbonation thread on here too recently, to which I contributed. WLP002 does seem prone to it, whether for creeping attenuation itself in bottles, and/or for the fact that the lower attenuation does leave more for anything else around to chew through. Great flavour though. [I would be interested for any brief comment from Dennis or anyone who I know has used it more than me, whether they get long term stable bottled beer with it, including (importantly) when the FG is over (say) 1.014.]

For me, the one time I used WLP005, it was a pretty dull, almost bottom fermenting in appearance, attenuative strain, probably nothing like the Ringwood yeast people describe from the brewery, as noted before.

I would say I have used 002 in at least 75%, maybe more, of all my brews over the last 15 or so years. It normally ends around 1010-1012 can't remember ever ending higher. I rarely bottle but when I do over carbonation is never a problem. I have read that this yeast needs to be roused but I put it in the fermenter and leave alone for 10 days, job done.

[Rkzi]

It's interesting that only some have this problem. Dennis, do you store your bottles at room temp after carbonation and do you use yeast nutrient or simple sugars in your recipes? Do you use priming sugar or do you bottle from the keg?

Thanks for linking the thread MTW, one interesting thing from there was the observation by user jaroporter that the addition of sugar to fv caused a gravity drop of five points. In the homebrewtalk thread, addition of nutrient was reported to also cause a similar drop in gravity (page 3). One thing with sugar is that it's supposed to repress flocculation, so the yeast gets back into suspension and maybe gets to munch those longer chain sugars (which IIRC don't repress flocculation) after the small amount of sugar is consumed. Premature flocculation has been avoided in British breweries by the use of rousing/wort circulation, and in elsewhere for example by the use of wood chips in the fv (Budweiser). I used to do forced-fermentation tests, but did not do one for the Ringwood batch, maybe I should start doing them again. In fact, maybe I should do two in my next batch and add some sugar to the other one to see if it causes a drop in gravity (although Danstar's London ESB seems to be a different critter than WLP002/Wy1968)

[Dennis King]

It's interesting that only some have this problem. Dennis, do you store your bottles at room temp after carbonation and do you use yeast nutrient or simple sugars in your recipes? Do you use priming sugar or do you bottle from the keg?

When I do bottle, most of my beer is via polypin, I condition and allow to drop bright in a polypin then prime with bog standard sugar. Warm condition for 2 weeks then store in the garage that is cold in winter but rarely to hot in summer. Never use yeast nutrient and for the last year or so used invert sugar before that standard sugar although the majority of my beers use malt only.

[Rkzi]

It's interesting that only some have this problem. Dennis, do you store your bottles at room temp after carbonation and do you use yeast nutrient or simple sugars in your recipes? Do you use priming sugar or do you bottle from the keg?

When I do bottle, most of my beer is via polypin, I condition and allow to drop bright in a polypin then prime with bog standard sugar. Warm condition for 2 weeks then store in the garage that is cold in winter but rarely to hot in summer. Never use yeast nutrient and for the last year or so used invert sugar before that standard sugar although the majority of my beers use malt only.

Ok so nothing special in there, except that I guess nowadays not everyone uses a secondary. How long does the conditioning in the polypin usually take?

[Dennis King]

When I do bottle, most of my beer is via polypin, I condition and allow to drop bright in a polypin then prime with bog standard sugar. Warm condition for 2 weeks then store in the garage that is cold in winter but rarely to hot in summer. Never use yeast nutrient and for the last year or so used invert sugar before that standard sugar although the majority of my beers use malt only.

Ok so nothing special in there, except that I guess nowadays not everyone uses a secondary. How long does the conditioning in the polypin usually take?[/quote]

If I'm going to drink from the polypin I normally leave it 3 weeks and I would not describe it as secondary as it's from FV to dispensing vessel.

[Rkzi]

If I'm going to drink from the polypin I normally leave it 3 weeks and I would not describe it as secondary as it's from FV to dispensing vessel.

But when bottling from polypin it kind of functions as a secondary? Just thinking if racking the beer would cause the yeast to finish its job.