White Shield

[Scooby]

Having propagated Hop Back and Brakspear yeast and seeing as Chris has posted positive remarks about White Shield
I thought I'd have a go.

I made a 300ml starter with some 1.041 wort I had in the freezer from a previous brew, on day 3 I made it up to 1500ml
with some of the same wort, that was last night this morning it was looking good.



It's taken off much quicker and is more vigorous than other starters, another thing I notice is the colour is slightly darker
both in the original bottle and in the starter. Planning a brew on Friday, not sure I have enough head space in my fermenter

[Scooby]

I'm looking forward to brewing with this yeast Chris and will take note regarding rousing

The Brakspear yeast was from 'Oxford Gold', I made a starter the same as I did for Hop Back and it went from 1.040 to a fg of 1.010
no rousing, so 75% attenuation unlike the HB yeast that always stops at about 1.014-16 no matter what I do, it does lose a few points
in the keg and tastes great so not worried. I'm not that good at describing flavour profiles I used it in my Hophead clone and thought
it was fairly dry and clean tasting, a nice beer and will use it again, in fact with these three yeast (assuming WS is successful) apart
from unplanned brews I can't see any reason to use anything else.

[Scooby]

I seem to remember a post regarding Oxford Gold no longer being bottle conditioned, I have to admit the yeast sediment was only the slightest smear in the bottles I had so could easily have been mistaken as not being bottle conditioned, I got mine about 6 weeks ago about the time Marston's took over the Witney brewery, and perhaps to soon to have changed their bottling. I'll check out the bottles when I shop. You could also use Tripple but it's over 7% not so good for propagating and far to strong for me to drink

[coatesg]

Pretty sure it is still bottle conditioned - Marstons took over Refresh in Apr 2008, and I tried the Oxford Gold around Nov/Dec I think and it was still bottle conditioned then - but you're right in that you don't get much! I found it stank of stank of sulphur during the ferment, but had a nice taste to the finished product - quite fruity I found.

White Shield looks good and healthy, Scoobs - will have to give that a go at some point!

[Scooby]

Pretty sure it is still bottle conditioned - Marstons took over Refresh in Apr 2008, and I tried the Oxford Gold around Nov/Dec I think and it was still bottle conditioned then - but you're right in that you don't get much! I found it stank of stank of sulphur during the ferment, but had a nice taste to the finished product - quite fruity I found.

White Shield looks good and healthy, Scoobs - will have to give that a go at some point!

Oops! lost a year of my life somewhere

Cheers for that reminds me of the Guinness starters, they did their best to climb out of the milk bottle

[coatesg]

Oops! lost a year of my life somewhere

After it happened, as a "celebration" of the buyout, the White Horse Brewery (Stanford-in-Vale) brought out a limited release called "Ding, Dong the Witch is Dead!" - class!

[Scooby]

Keep meaning to pop down there, have you been? Abbeychart is on the same business park and I see some on here have been ordering fittings from them.

[coatesg]

Not yet - some of the Oxford group did a group visit to White Horse last year though. Apparently they use S04 (according to them - it's much easier to use than having to keep a stock of liquid yeast going) and they ferment relatively high - early to mid twenties.

Just had a look at the Abbeychart site - looks like they sell some useful stuff - though paying £64 for a corny seems a tad expensive!

[Scooby]

I went to Abbychart a while back and they were very helpful although very much trade orientated, they had pallet loads of cornies, the price is high compared to what we are used to paying but a plastic keg is £45-50 and other stainless vessels like boilers are £100+

I was on hols in the Isle of Scilly recently, the head of the school over there had a change of direction and started brewing 'Ales of Scilly.' I aranged to see him and spent 2hrs at the brewery chatting, great bloke and very interesting. He uses S04 and ferments at 22c for 5 days and then cools to 15c for 2 days.

I reckon it's more to do with finance than ease of use, a bulk lot of S04 is as cheap as chips and they aren't going to spend more than they have to

[Whorst]

I've heard that White Labs WLP-013, London Ale Yeast is the Worthington strain?
That's next on my list.

[Scooby]

I have this yeast in a brew at the moment, roughly 4 days in. The yeast crop has been impressive a good 4-5", I have roused twice daily including stirring the crop in and it has reformed to it's original state very quickly. The fermentation has started to subside now but still has a thick pancake on top. It has gone from 1.047 to 1.016 at present, about 65%. iirc that's about the figure Chris quoted somewhere.

I'm not sure about the accuracy of those comparison charts but one thing seems sure this is a cracking yeast with loads of character.

[Scooby]

Excellent Just shows never be hasty where brewing is concerned.

1.013-1.014 from 1.047 will be 70% and by the way it's still working I reckon it will easily get there. Looks like the cooler weather will be here shortly which will be good news for the end of the fermentation. As you said I haven't detected any off flavours due to higher temps

[SiHoltye]

I bought 2 bottles of White Shield to use the yeast from...trouble was I left them outside in the warm (30°C+ eek) yesterday and although not in direct sunlight I saw this little mess this morning.




The other WS, and the Youngs Special are both in the fridge now being bottle conditioned

[Jerry Cornelius]

yeah, not in direct sunlight but next to a bloody radiator

Excellent! Made me laugh

[SiHoltye]

The convection heater's only being stored in the yard, not in use.