Membership questions? Log in issues? Email info@brewersassociation.org

Author Topic: Lalbrew Verdant IPA Yeast  (Read 25832 times)

Offline Wilbur

  • Brewmaster
  • *****
  • Posts: 876
Lalbrew Verdant IPA Yeast
« on: October 05, 2020, 10:39:44 am »
Any experience with this yeast? Any preferences?

Offline Bob357

  • Brewmaster
  • *****
  • Posts: 895
  • Consensus means nothing to me. I am who I am.
Re: Lalbrew Verdant IPA Yeast
« Reply #1 on: October 05, 2020, 11:52:45 am »
Just ordered a packet. After watching David Heath's review on youtube decided it was worth a try.
Beer is my bucket list,

Bob357
Fallon, NV

Offline skyler

  • Brewmaster
  • *****
  • Posts: 956
  • Hmm. Human music. I like it.
Re: Lalbrew Verdant IPA Yeast
« Reply #2 on: October 06, 2020, 09:02:27 am »
I was planning on trying it out soon. I know it is meant for hazies, but the "vanilla" flavor described sounds more like it would be nice in a dark beer. Since I love me some London III in a brown ale or porter, anyway, I thought I might do a nice American Brown Ale and then use some of the slurry for a Hazy IPA since I haven't made one in a while and I need to prove my street cred to my next door neighbors.

Offline BrewBama

  • Official Poobah of No Life. (I Got Ban Hammered by Drew)
  • *********
  • Posts: 6050
Re: Lalbrew Verdant IPA Yeast
« Reply #3 on: October 10, 2020, 09:56:13 am »
https://youtu.be/Wre4XX7cFko


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Offline tommymorris

  • Official Poobah of No Life. (I Got Ban Hammered by Drew)
  • *********
  • Posts: 3869
Re: Lalbrew Verdant IPA Yeast
« Reply #4 on: October 10, 2020, 10:53:02 am »
I was planning on trying it out soon. I know it is meant for hazies, but the "vanilla" flavor described sounds more like it would be nice in a dark beer. Since I love me some London III in a brown ale or porter, anyway, I thought I might do a nice American Brown Ale and then use some of the slurry for a Hazy IPA since I haven't made one in a while and I need to prove my street cred to my next door neighbors.
Where did you see vanilla?


Offline Mardoo

  • 1st Kit
  • *
  • Posts: 20
Re: Lalbrew Verdant IPA Yeast
« Reply #5 on: October 10, 2020, 10:08:21 pm »
We’ve used it on a few brews. It’s a beast. 80%+ attenuation (88% on one). It will chew through most of the sugars in a couple days. It generates very clear stonefruit flavours and works well with early and late dry hopping. It seems to leave more bitterness than some yeasts, so especially for NEIPA’s consider dialling back your IBU’s a tad.

It’s quickly becoming a favourite. We’ve used it on IPA’s and NEIPA’s, and are just about to use it on a stout. I have no hesitation recommending it for those who want background stone fruit flavours in their beer. I’m unsure whether it would play well with strong roast flavours, but it does play well with lighter roasts.

We’re guessing Belgian heritage for it, as it throws some solid bubblegum during ferment, but that doesn’t really stay around. I prefer it with ferments around 18C, but we’ve also pushed it as high as 24C with no apparent ill effect, although plan on keeping it lower in general.

Offline Northern_Brewer

  • Assistant Brewer
  • ***
  • Posts: 158
  • British - apparently some US company stole my name
Re: Lalbrew Verdant IPA Yeast
« Reply #6 on: October 14, 2020, 03:39:45 am »
We’re guessing Belgian heritage for it, as it throws some solid bubblegum during ferment, but that doesn’t really stay around. I prefer it with ferments around 18C, but we’ve also pushed it as high as 24C with no apparent ill effect, although plan on keeping it lower in general.

Why do people assume that only Belgian yeasts have interesting flavours? There's a huge diversity in British brewing yeasts, from the subtle phenolics in most Yorkshire yeasts, to the pure banana of Hanlon's. Lost & Grounded have sold saisons that use WLP037 Yorkshire Square...

Verdant admit to having used "a generic London Ale III yeast from a bigger yeast bank" when they started but then used a single strain selected from that as their house strain and the general consensus is that the Lallemand product is a descendant of that 1318-like yeast.

They use a pretty traditional British fermentation profile - pitch at 18C, hold at 19C, then with 10 points to go let it free rise to 22C and hold until it passes a VDK test (it does produce a bit of diacetyl but cleans it up), and then cool to 15C for dry hopping.

Offline Mardoo

  • 1st Kit
  • *
  • Posts: 20
Re: Lalbrew Verdant IPA Yeast
« Reply #7 on: October 14, 2020, 04:19:15 am »
Wow. OK. Gettin’ a bit shirty there mate.

Offline Northern_Brewer

  • Assistant Brewer
  • ***
  • Posts: 158
  • British - apparently some US company stole my name
Re: Lalbrew Verdant IPA Yeast
« Reply #8 on: October 15, 2020, 04:25:12 am »
No shirtiness intended, just pointing out that one of the accepted wisdoms of US homebrewing isn't actually true. Getting closer to the truth is good, right?

Offline Cliffs

  • Brewmaster
  • *****
  • Posts: 608
Re: Lalbrew Verdant IPA Yeast
« Reply #9 on: October 15, 2020, 10:59:52 am »
We’ve used it on a few brews. It’s a beast. 80%+ attenuation (88% on one). It will chew through most of the sugars in a couple days. It generates very clear stonefruit flavours and works well with early and late dry hopping. It seems to leave more bitterness than some yeasts, so especially for NEIPA’s consider dialling back your IBU’s a tad.

It’s quickly becoming a favourite. We’ve used it on IPA’s and NEIPA’s, and are just about to use it on a stout. I have no hesitation recommending it for those who want background stone fruit flavours in their beer. I’m unsure whether it would play well with strong roast flavours, but it does play well with lighter roasts.

We’re guessing Belgian heritage for it, as it throws some solid bubblegum during ferment, but that doesn’t really stay around. I prefer it with ferments around 18C, but we’ve also pushed it as high as 24C with no apparent ill effect, although plan on keeping it lower in general.

I believe it is an isolate from a serially repitched london III culture.

Offline Saccharomyces

  • Senior Brewmaster
  • ******
  • Posts: 1136
  • Deus ex machina
Re: Lalbrew Verdant IPA Yeast
« Reply #10 on: October 16, 2020, 05:34:01 pm »
I believe it is an isolate from a serially repitched london III culture.

Yes, but London III is a British yeast.  We just co-opted it.  I emphasized the overuse of temperature control in American amateur brewing circles in my blog entry entitled "Have You Seen Ester?" (https://www.experimentalbrew.com/blogs/saccharomyces/have-you-seen-ester).  I brought up the issue of picking the yeast culture for the job at hand instead of attempting to trick a selected yeast culture into doing the job at hand.  Temperature control has become a substitute for understanding culture differences in American brewing circles. The time for that nonsense has come and gone.

Offline Saccharomyces

  • Senior Brewmaster
  • ******
  • Posts: 1136
  • Deus ex machina
Re: Lalbrew Verdant IPA Yeast
« Reply #11 on: October 18, 2020, 08:54:45 am »
Why do people assume that only Belgian yeasts have interesting flavours? There's a huge diversity in British brewing yeasts, from the subtle phenolics in most Yorkshire yeasts, to the pure banana of Hanlon's. Lost & Grounded have sold saisons that use WLP037 Yorkshire Square...

I will second that assertion.  Back when I was posting on this forum as S. Cerevisiae, I was posting on a British forum called Jim's Beer Kit as YeastWhisperer.  Those guys turned me on to the cultures from a British brewing organization called Brewlab.  I scoured the list for interesting cultures that I was fairly certain were not available in the US and placed an order.  First off, Brewlab slants were ginormous compared to what I was used to using for my own bank.  Secondly, they opened my eyes to the diversity of brewers yeast in England.  For example, I was literally shocked when I used Devon 1.  I had never dealt with a British yeast strain that was as POF+ as that strain.  I did not know what to make of it.  I thought that my culture may have gotten contaminated on the trip across the pond, so I took the slant that I subcultured from the Brewlab slant plated it for singles, selected several colonies that I transferred to different slants, grew each isolate up, and they were all POF+.  Sussex 1 was also POF+. 
 
Quote
Verdant admit to having used "a generic London Ale III yeast from a bigger yeast bank" when they started but then used a single strain selected from that as their house strain and the general consensus is that the Lallemand product is a descendant of that 1318-like yeast.

I am fairly certain that London Ale III is a single cell isolate.  Does the Verdant sub-isolate floc to the top like London Ale III?

Quote
They use a pretty traditional British fermentation profile - pitch at 18C, hold at 19C, then with 10 points to go let it free rise to 22C and hold until it passes a VDK test (it does produce a bit of diacetyl but cleans it up), and then cool to 15C for dry hopping.

I used to routinely pitch at 65F (a little more than 18C) and allow my ales to rise to 72F (22C) when I fermented in the basement of the home in which I lived for most of the first 11 years that I brewed.  I took a hiatus and when I came back two things were dominant in American amateur brewing; namely, the use of refrigeration to keep ale fermentation temperature on the low to mid-side of the 60s and the use of stir plates.  I have created blog entries dispelling amateur-brewer created myth in both areas.  I think that what happened while I was away was a big shift toward squeaky clean ale fermentation, which created the heavy use of temperature control to slow replication during the exponential growth stage, which, in turn, reduced growth-related ester and diketone compounds. To me, it felt like American brewers were strangling the life force out of many British cultures. That is why I emphasized that brewers should pick the culture for the job at hand instead of attempting to trick a culture into doing the job at hand. 

What got me interested in learning how to brew was the beer produced by a microbrewery called Wild Goose in Cambridge, Maryland. That brewery soon had company from two other Alan Pugsley installed breweries; namely, the Wharf Rat in Baltimore and Arrowhead just over the border in Pennsylvania. All of the breweries were Peter Austin and Partners systems modeled after Peter's Ringwood Brewery.  A lot of early amateur brewers on the East Coast were influenced by Alan's Pugsley's work because he built breweries up and down the East Coast, not the least of which was Geary.  Beer produced in open fermentation vessels with a multi-strain yeast culture like true Ringwood have a very different flavor profile than the typical West Coast squeaky clean ale.  True Ringwood can be a cruel mistress if one is not experienced with multi-strain Yorkshire cultures. 

I have a question; namely, what is the average ground water temperature in England?  Does it remain under 18C year round? You guys are above the 50th parallel.  If the Gulf Stream did not exist, you would experience much colder temperatures.

In the end, I am not attempting to disrespect what American amateur and professional craft brewers have managed to do in just a few decades. However, the trend I am seeing is very one-dimensional.   I was in a well-stocked beer store on Friday.  There were a lot of different beer styles, but the only beer style in the cooler was a IPA.  That is a dangerous trend if it continues because the large industrial brewers excel at producing one type of beer and they can do it at cost that no craft brewer can match, not even big craft brewers like Sierra Nevada.

Offline Mardoo

  • 1st Kit
  • *
  • Posts: 20
Re: Lalbrew Verdant IPA Yeast
« Reply #12 on: October 18, 2020, 10:35:20 pm »
No shirtiness intended, just pointing out that one of the accepted wisdoms of US homebrewing isn't actually true. Getting closer to the truth is good, right?
If that’s accepted, that sure ain’t wisdom

Offline Northern_Brewer

  • Assistant Brewer
  • ***
  • Posts: 158
  • British - apparently some US company stole my name
Re: Lalbrew Verdant IPA Yeast
« Reply #13 on: October 19, 2020, 05:35:20 am »
I was literally shocked when I used Devon 1.  I had never dealt with a British yeast strain that was as POF+ as that strain....Sussex 1 was also POF+.
 
Devon1 is supposedly from Hanlons. Sussex1 is supposedly from Harvey's. Their current yeast originally came from John Smith's in 1957 and a 1981 isolate has been sequenced and is a saison type most closely related to WLP038 Manchester (a rare vault strain which people on HBT seem to like a lot, lockdown has meant my vial has been sat in a fridge a long way away, so I haven't tried it yet). But it does seem to be another example where the "British saisons" can get very phenolic in a closed fermenter, but the aeration they get in the breweries with long experience of using them commercially, largely suppresses the phenolics.

I am fairly certain that London Ale III is a single cell isolate.  Does the Verdant sub-isolate floc to the top like London Ale III?

Oh, I'm sure it was a single-cfu isolate originally, but that doesn't mean that a homogenous pitch reaches the brewer. Per Verdant :
"We originally used a generic London Ale III yeast from a bigger yeast bank, but after conducting tests we found that it had other strains in the sample that definitely weren’t helpful for the juicy IPAs we tend to make. Our current supplier offered to isolate the London Ale III yeast and propagate it for us, which went extremely well for many batches"

My impression was that in the mid-teens at least, the pitches that reached brewers were generally not as pure as people might think. Chris Giles from Surebrew has found several flocc variants in US-05 (and he may well have been working with Verdant, they're one of the main suppliers of yeast to small breweries here) and a number of people found a lot of pastorianus-like yeast in Nottingham. I suspect that the Left Hand lawsuit over contaminated WLP090 in 2017 was just the tip of an iceberg, and that there's been quite a lot of work on QA quietly going on in the background since then. Just in the last few weeks, there's been a couple of people on HBT complaining about phenolics from Lallemand kolsch - you obviously never know from a forum thread whether that's just a brewhouse contamination, but it seems to be too widespread for that.

I have a question; namely, what is the average ground water temperature in England?  Does it remain under 18C year round? You guys are above the 50th parallel.  If the Gulf Stream did not exist, you would experience much colder temperatures.

It is probably sufficient to say that it's not something we ever worry about - the heat pump people here work on the assumption of 10C at 6m depth year-round. The fact that we're an island also helps - London may be north of Calgary but even without the Gulf Stream, we'd be more like Vancouver Island than the Rockies.

Offline Saccharomyces

  • Senior Brewmaster
  • ******
  • Posts: 1136
  • Deus ex machina
Re: Lalbrew Verdant IPA Yeast
« Reply #14 on: October 20, 2020, 04:49:06 pm »

I am fairly certain that London Ale III is a single cell isolate.  Does the Verdant sub-isolate floc to the top like London Ale III?

Oh, I'm sure it was a single-cfu isolate originally, but that doesn't mean that a homogenous pitch reaches the brewer. Per Verdant :
"We originally used a generic London Ale III yeast from a bigger yeast bank, but after conducting tests we found that it had other strains in the sample that definitely weren’t helpful for the juicy IPAs we tend to make. Our current supplier offered to isolate the London Ale III yeast and propagate it for us, which went extremely well for many batches"

My impression was that in the mid-teens at least, the pitches that reached brewers were generally not as pure as people might think. Chris Giles from Surebrew has found several flocc variants in US-05 (and he may well have been working with Verdant, they're one of the main suppliers of yeast to small breweries here)

That does not take a rocket scientist to understand.  Of course, one is going to experience variants in dry yeast. When one starts with a single cell and grows it to tons of yeast, we are talking about a lot of generations.  The parent of US-05 and Chico; namely, Siebel BRY-96 is notorious for genetic drift.  There is a research project going on at the University of Washington that is studying genetic drift of this culture in breweries. The number of generations that occur when propagating below the Crabtree threshold in a bioreacter at industrial scale is like serially repitching the same culture a hundred, if not hundreds of times. To believe that a culture will not develop SNPs (single nucleotide polymorphisms) or a chromosomal translocation or two is not being realistic.  Tobias Fischborn, a senior research scientist at Lallemand, has confirmed that BRY-97 is an isolate of BRY-96 with better flocculation characteristics from a brewery that started with BRY-96.  In this case, whatever mutations occurred from selective pressure being placed on the culture were positive from a flocculation point of view.

Quote
It is probably sufficient to say that it's not something we ever worry about - the heat pump people here work on the assumption of 10C at 6m depth year-round. The fact that we're an island also helps - London may be north of Calgary but even without the Gulf Stream, we'd be more like Vancouver Island than the Rockies.

For me, it was more about the ability to pipe ground water through piping within a fermentation vessel to chill it instead of having to rely on glycol chillers.  The British brewer who helped build the British Brewing Company in Glen Burnie, Maryland in 1988; namely Steve Parks, was not prepared for the temperatures he was going to have deal with in the brewery.  He was not used to brewing in such a hazy, hot, and humid place when summer came around.
« Last Edit: October 20, 2020, 10:39:07 pm by Saccharomyces »