WLP004 - Irish Ale Yeast

[Bubbles]

First time using this yeast strain.. any tips on how to treat it, or what to expect? How does it flocc?

I'm going to be doing a dry stout.

[molc]

Have a dry stout fermenting right now that started last night. I keep it at a constant 18C, as it's an absolute beast at the start. After 12 hours, there was already a 1cm kreustan and the fridge was working hard to keep the temp down.

Last time I used it, fermentation was done in 3 days, from a crazy kreustan to dropping. It clears pretty quickly as well, though it's harder to tell with dark beers.

I'd say find the coldest room you have and start it a couple of degrees colder to try and counteract the quick startup.

Looks like we'll have them ready around the same time. Will be interesting to try them at a meet.

[Leann ull]

Its my goto stout yeast buts its a demon and will bounce your fermenter around the room and finish in 4-5 Days, allow plenty of head room , all mine have blown off.
I have also used it for high abv RIS and other barrel beers.
Beerfly has a great pic of what happened to one of his fermentors.

[molc]

Its my goto stout yeast buts its a demon and will bounce your fermenter around the room and finish in 4-5 Days, allow plenty of head room , all mine have blown off.
I have also used it for high abv RIS and other barrel beers.
Beerfly has a great pic of what happened to one of his fermentors.

Crap, I forgot to put the blow off tube on mine. Hopefully it keeps itself in check until I get home this evening :/

[Leann ull]

This blow off is 1/2 inch and popping away imagine what that would do to a normal airlock.
http://www.nationalhomebrewclub.ie/forum/index.php/topic,15343.msg145894.html#msg145894
Post the pics

[molc]

Yeah it's in the fridge. I have 1/2" blowoff tube, just need to swap it for the airlock. Wouldn't mind, but I took it off when closing the lid forgetting what the yeast was like

You'll get a pic one way or the other this evening

Sent from my HTC One_M8 using Tapatalk

[Bubbles]

Looks like we'll have them ready around the same time. Will be interesting to try them at a meet.

Will probably be doing it in 2 weeks or so. But I like your thinking.

[Bubbles]

Its my goto stout yeast buts its a demon and will bounce your fermenter around the room and finish in 4-5 Days, allow plenty of head room , all mine have blown off.
I have also used it for high abv RIS and other barrel beers.
Beerfly has a great pic of what happened to one of his fermentors.

I know you're a fan of 004!

I can handle the fermenter bouncing around the room! I just can't handle slow and stuck fermentations. Glad to hear it's not a strain which is prone to sticking.

Does it floc well?

[Bubbles]

Have a dry stout fermenting right now that started last night. I keep it at a constant 18C, as it's an absolute beast at the start. After 12 hours, there was already a 1cm kreustan and the fridge was working hard to keep the temp down.

Last time I used it, fermentation was done in 3 days, from a crazy kreustan to dropping. It clears pretty quickly as well, though it's harder to tell with dark beers.

I'd say find the coldest room you have and start it a couple of degrees colder to try and counteract the quick startup.

Looks like we'll have them ready around the same time. Will be interesting to try them at a meet.

dude, what's your malt bill on this?

[molc]

dude, what's your malt bill on this?

Fairly standard dry stout, with two tweaks. I brought the first version of this to a meet last year.
1. Added some brown malt, based on comments from some of the other North County Brewers. It was about 18 months old, so not the freshest alas, but all I had to hand.
2. Added some EKG in the last 5 minutes to push a bit more hop flavour.

Recipe
OG 1.042
FG ~1.008
IBU: ~41
Size: 23L

60% Pale Ale Malt (Used a combination of Minch Hookhead and Castle Pale)
20% Flaked Barley
10% Roasted Barley (Minch) - Ground this in a coffee grinder, to dust. Warning it goes everywhere
10% Brown Malt (old, unknown origin!)
50g EKG (~40IBU), First Wort Hop
15g EKG @ 5
1.1L WLP004 starter, Gen2 for the vial

No water treatment, as calculated PH came to 5.6. Raheny has very soft water.

[Leann ull]

It's a good little flocker and I get compacted trub, are you under pressure to evict it from bucket or something?
ps enjoy the baby poo clean up

[Bubbles]

Looks grand.

My last dry stout I used a classic 70-20-10 of the usual suspects. Was quite nice, but I want a bit more acrid roast and coffee this time, so I'm going to use a few different roasted malts instead of just roasted barley. In addition to the RB, I'll use some black malt and Carafa Special too. Saw a nice recipe in BYO recently that uses something similar. I'm trying to try new things at the moment.

My last dry stout also used UD-05 which was fine, but probably not a great choice for the style.

[Bubbles]

It's a good little flocker and I get compact trub, are you under pressure to evict it from bucket or something?

No, not at all. I just don't like dealing with strains that are slow to finish.

[Leann ull]

I've done some with a very small amount of acidulated malt which was good as it brought a real bite, last one was 10 min mash with black malts that wasn't great as I was expecting more smoothness but I felt like it wasn't enough roast, a session Dry, it wasn't thin more gold blend than expresso.
Sour mash or bugs is next on the stout to do list.

[molc]

My first stout was with US-05 and it came out really well. I get the sharp finish from the roasted barley ground up fine. When you grind it like that, it actually smells just like ground coffee actually.

Carafa special is very smooth - you'll get some roast but no burnt or sharpness from that. I used it in a schwarzbier and it was lovely, full and malty, but certainly not like a dry stout.

A tip we got from O'Haras was that they don't mix roasted grains, as they feel they clash. All chocolate or all brown could be really interesting I think...