[jrdatta]

Yeah, it definitely needs to be a tiny amount, <5% of your grist for sure.  But if done properly it can be pleasant without darkening the beer too much. I would veer more towards aromatic.  Also agree with the carb level.

[69franx]

Thanks again, very timely as I did have to postpone. I am planning on brewing this weekend. @ZStreetBrew,
quote: "Also you can get away with full volume mashing with small beers like this by making sure your water profiles and pH is in check." If I go this route, as in my OP, I would be mashing at about 4.2 quarts per pound, you would not expect any issues at that rate given proper water treatment?

[jrdatta]

Thanks again, very timely as I did have to postpone. I am planning on brewing this weekend. @ZStreetBrew,
quote: "Also you can get away with full volume mashing with small beers like this by making sure your water profiles and pH is in check." If I go this route, as in my OP, I would be mashing at about 4.2 quarts per pound, you would not expect any issues at that rate given proper water treatment?

I haven't had any issues in doing so.  I just make sure to give the mash time and stir a few times. With ratios that high I give the mash a full 90 minutes to do its thing and give it a mash out and get pretty close to 80% mash efficiency and 72% brewhouse.

[69franx]

Thanks for that, so many choices. I'm still liking the idea of 3qt/#, another infusion for mashout, then whatever is left to hit preboil volune goes straight to kettle

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[69franx]

Got this brewed up this afternoon. Sitting in the chest freezer waiting for yeast first thing in the morning. Put 9.5 gallons into the freezer, expecting 1/2 gallon or so of trub before splitting into separate fermentor for each yeast. First time conditioning grain and first use of MIAB from the brew bag, easiest lauter I've had in years. Shooting for 1.040, refractometer reading was 1.036, will see what the hydro says tomorrow morning.

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Edit: hydro reading was dead on at 1.040, so very happy with that. Wound up boiling for almost 2 hours due to just draining my tun and not watching volume. Conditioned my grain and used a mash bag, over shot pre-boil volume by almost a gallon, going to have to adjust my grain absorption number to account for the bag. All in all, a great brew day. Pitched yesterday and it's going great now with both yeasts.

[stpug]

I just put my WLP033 into a starter for propagating, and noticed a HUGE yeast smell from the vial unlike most other yeasts.  Did you happen to notice the smell of your vials?  Where they much different from each other?

My best description for the aroma of WLP033 was nearly identical to Fleischmann's Active Dry Yeast.  I use F-ADY a fair amount for pizza dough and foccacia, and it has a big, yeast and wonderful smell to it.  I once bought a pound of Redstar ADY and returned it because it's "yeastiness" paled in comparison to Fleischmann's.  Anyway, that's besides the point

I look forward to your tasting results (sample notes) when you get around to them.  I'm planning a best bitter for Friday so I'm not too far behind you.

[69franx]

     I did not notice any strong aromas, but I was not getting my nose in there very close. I did notice that both the 030 & the 033 were a beast to get out of the vials. I shook them for several minutes to try to get all the yeast into the medium, but still wound up having to add a little RO to the vial and re-shake to get all the goodness out of the vials. After shaking, the yeast formed a thick sludge on the outer edge of the vials as I cracked the seals (glad I had sanitized the vials) that was thicker than I have ever seen. I have not used many vials since they started packaging in the fresh pitch pouches (think that's what they call them) and I don't remember ever having this much trouble getting a smooth pour from the vials prior to these strains.
     I pitched Sunday afternoon and then left town overnight, when I got home yesterday afternoon and opened my chest freezer both airlocks were popping regularly. Given my low 1.040 OG, I plan on raising my temp a couple degrees today after work. I pitched at 65° F and set my controller to 64°. Slow ramp to 70°-72° over the next 3 days and likely hydro test on Friday. Next brew day is likely 2 weeks from this brew day and I expect them to be ready to package, so am working on ideas for second gen pitches for both.

[stpug]

Very good. I'm eager to hear how the two batches compare to each other - that's cool that you did them side-by-side like that.

I had the same issue getting the yeast out of the vial.  I decanted the liquid when I pulled the vial from the fridge and let the yeast slowly warm up for 20 minutes.  When I went to shake it out of the vial into the flask it didn't budge.  I ended up adding some of my chilled starter wort to the vial to shake it up, and that worked pretty well.  I then rinsed the vial one last time with some more starter wort to get every last cell out of there .  I'm super stoked to finally have this yeast to put through the paces after everything Mark said about it, and the aroma from the vial is very encouraging as well.

I'd love to hear what your hydro test for WLP033 checks out at when you get around to it just to have a data point to work from in terms of attenuation level of this strain.  I'm hoping for a full 76%AA on a fairly fermentable best bitter/golden ale wort.

I'll probably do another best bitter after this one using an alternative recipe I've done (and liked) followed by an ESB-style beer I made a couple years ago that turned out quite tasty.  I generally brew sub-6% beer because it doesn't get me into too much trouble

[69franx]

No activity this morning, so I ran hydro test at 60 hours post pitch, OG was 1.040:
     WLP030 down to 1.015, 61.6% ADF: still a bit to go
     WLP033 down to 1.012, 69.2% ADF: pretty close to done
Ramped up the temp a little more to get both to finish, going to dry hop tonight with 1.5oz EKG per strain.
WLP030 was one month older than the WLP033, so it may take a day or 2 longer to get to the expected 1.010
     First samples tasted good but not great, still a lot of yeast in suspension, should be great by this weekend. Between the 2, the 030 was my clear favorite. Even at a slightly higher gravity still, it just tasted more finished, cleaner than the 033. Likely will not bottle til next weekend though due to time constraints

[stpug]

Thanks for the follow-up.  I'll be interested in seeing if either of those strains hit 75%AA, particularly 033.  I'm also interested in hearing how they compare when fully bottle-conditioned and serving, particularly on the "estery" front.  Thanks again for the attenuation check, this gives me something to go on for Friday's mash schedule.

[69franx]

     Your welcome. Not sure if I included this anywhere else yet, but my mash settled in at 150° rather than the planned 154°. First time using a bag, and I probably added grain more slowly to the water than normal, as I was visually inspecting my first batch with conditioned grain. With this in mind, I do expect to get a couple more points off of each of these in the next couple days and will update as I see that happening or not. Trying to be patient, I will continue to ramp and not check again until Saturday morning most likely.

[stpug]

Just brewed up my best bitter/golden ale today and pitched a highly active, "scary low" amount of WLP033 yeast (60b cells into 5.4gal) with only splash racking aeration.  I'll try to remember to post my follow-up as things progress along.

I'll be keeping an eye on the top cropping abilities of this yeast, but everything I've seen so far does not indicate it's a great top cropper.

I have noticed that WLP033 leaves things really hazy.  The White Labs vial I got never totally cleared in the fridge in 3 weeks.  On Wednesday I made a build-up starter, and I put the finished starters into the fridge and, again, those still have not cleared (very hazy, borderline cloudy).  I'll be kegging this beer with some biofine clear to encourage a clearer end product.

I always taste the decant water from my starters to get a better sense of what's going on.  I'm primarily looking for bad stuff, off-tastes, contamination issues, etc, but am also interested in getting a vague idea of what the yeast might contribute to the final beer.  Today when I tasted the decant water from WLP033 I distinctly tasted the classic butter (diacetyl) flavor.  Based on that, I intend on giving a few extra days of clean-up time at elevated temps (72F-ish) to ensure most (if not all) of that gets cleaned up prior to kegging. 69franx, when you tasted your two beers the other day did you happen to sense any butter flavor in the wlp033 sample?  You said the WLP030 had a cleaner taste, I wonder if you were inadvertently picking up on an off-character, butter flavor in the WLP033 beer.

[69franx]

It could easily have been. My palate is not very well trained (read as "I may know what I like or don't, but not necessarily why.). I dry hopped both batches last night with 1.5oz EKG, and tested again. The 030 is down to 1.009/10 while the 033 was still sitting around 1.014. the 033 has a heat wrap on it, currently holding at 72F so I am not expecting diacetyl. I have moved my plans up and will likely bottle before the original plan for next weekend. Want to have these on hand for a tasting first weekend in June

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[Phil_M]

I always taste the decant water from my starters to get a better sense of what's going on.  I'm primarily looking for bad stuff, off-tastes, contamination issues, etc, but am also interested in getting a vague idea of what the yeast might contribute to the final beer.  Today when I tasted the decant water from WLP033 I distinctly tasted the classic butter (diacetyl) flavor.  Based on that, I intend on giving a few extra days of clean-up time at elevated temps (72F-ish) to ensure most (if not all) of that gets cleaned up prior to kegging.

It should, for many British brewers Diacetyl is desired, and some will even keep the yeast replicating to increase diacetyl production. Shocking, huh? Think funky and sour flavors being bad in a IPA, but great in some Belgain styles. The right "flaw" in the right conditions is actually pretty good. Try a diacetyl-heavy brew served at ~1.8 or fewer volumes of CO₂. I promise you'll be surprised.

If you want to try a commercial example instead of experimenting with an entire batch, try and source a (fresh) bottle of Samuel Smith's Nut Brown Ale. To me, the "hard caramel candy" flavor found in many British beers makes the diacetyl come across more as toffee/butterscotch, and it's great in the right beer.

[69franx]

Checked gravity again today: 030 is down to 1.011 & 033 is down to 1.010. both need to settle a bit, so dropping temp. Plan is to bottle Thursday

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