Does anyone have any experience with wyeast London Ale III 1318. I need a good top cropping yeast strain, but don't want to make specificaly English beers. Is this a good choice for an all around yeast. I would like to make some hoppy ales with american hops, stouts and porters, and maybe a light wheat ale.
That used to be the house strain at our pub. It's pretty versatile and you can get away without filtration, but it's not as versatile as good ol' Cal Ale. It also leaves most beers relatively sweet.
We currently use Wyeast 1968 "London ESB"for our house yeast and have found it to be a great hoppy beer strain. If you mash at the lower temp range and slightoly overpitch we can get some great attenuation levels and it still floccs out very nicely so filtration is not necessary. Even at low mash temps if leaves a nice malt character despite the fact that the beer is fairly dry on paper.
Our house yeast is 1318. I say use it for what you are planning. And for all the reasons list in youngbuckbrewers post. And if oyu don't have a filter, like us, it flocs great. It works well for us.
Matt Van Wyk
Flossmoor STation
Wyeast recommended it for our top cropping operation. We have a Golden, a Pale and a Stout in secondary that are successful. Clean, fruity and well balanced. The Golden and Stout attenuated well. The Pale stalled out a bit on but came down an acceptable level for us. We carbonate the pale and golden manana. Northwest style Ales are what were generally shooting fo to start. And the whole youngs english strain throws a wrench in that I guess. But if Wyeast is correct it is ideal for our top cropping no filtering needs. So 1318 it tis.
We pitched our second generation into our stout and it it got after it HARD. Too hard....made a mess. But it tastes YUMMY. Wyeast recommended 14 pounds at 50% yeast viability. Per Wyeast we took a sample at day 3 in primary and let it settle out to obtain our crude 50% visual viability mark. We top cropped 10 pounds and it gushed for nearly 2 days. So we have some refinin' to do.
We pitch our third generation on Sunday. its been sittin for 10 days. Were nervous but Wyeast says two weeks tops. So...we will see......ahh being green.
Hey, I'm right behind you with the 1318. Today I pitched my third generation and my first batch is still conditioning, but it tastes good. I only pitched about 8 lbs slurry for this batch so it wouldn't gush over. I didn't, however, decant off any liquid that may have been in the bucket before weighing it . I Don't know if this will matter or not for pitching amounts. The viability is also kind of a guess for me. Do you just assume you'll loose some viability over time? Or is 50% just a good estimation overall? I also hit a kind of high mash temp, around 154-155 I wonder if this will leave my beer sweet?
I tried this yeast, but did not adopt it, so my experience is limited. Looking over my notes, I see that Wyeast's description was mostly accurate: was a real top cropper, aggressive fermenter, nice to work with if you crop from the top, as I do. From a performance PoV, very good.
I rejected it due to an objectionable residual sweetness, a sweet finish in the beer, even after good attenuation. It was more a perception of sweetness than actual residual sugar. Wyeast says it "finishes slightly sweet." I found that an understatement. The flavours/aromas were what I call "bready", that is, reminiscent of baker's yeast. I like that for some types of beer, but not in general.
Anyway, it was a good performer and I can only say it wasn't right for me personally in terms of flavour.
Hey wiredgourmet what top cropping yeast do you use if you didn't like the sweetness/bready character of the 1318. I'm still on the search for the perfect house yeast. White labs told me that thier 001 would top crop, but wyeast said that the 1056 would not. Now I thought they were the same thing, but steered away because I didn't want to be stuck without enough yeast to repitch and have to skim yeast off the bottom of the fermenter. Anyone elts top cropping? What do you use for a yeast strain? Anyone top cropping cal ale?
Gallon, the unique advantage with 1318 is that is absolutely *lives* on top and is ideal for cropping from cylindrical FVs. I have never encountered a yeast like it in that sense.
Most strains of S. cerevisiae will work well enough. If you can't get a pitchable amount due to FV shape/design, you can make starters if your time-budget allows.
Top cropping is the way to go. It takes a little practice getting the FV filled right in terms of the wort gravity and yeast performance, but when you get that down, and learn to time it right, you get ideal, pure yeast for repitching virtually indefinitely. No trub and very few mutants. You have got to let the non-attenuative, hyper-flocculent cells drop, but harvest before you get a non-flocculant, over-attenuative population. This timing is affected by yeast strain, temperature, pitch rate, and wort gravity. So it's a bit of a black art.
I regularly use several different sacchro species and two brett species plus lacto as well. Not at the same time, lol. The wild critters ferment continuously, with gyle added to make up for use.
I regularly use WY 3787, WY 1335, WY 1728, WLP 004, and WLP 099. Of the ones I use regularly, I would recommend the 1335 as an all around yeast. Croppable, good flocculation, good attenuation, drops bright (for me) in under 3 weeks. Flavour is clean/malty, only slightly fruity, fairly "English" but not bready or sweet.
Hey Gallon how are things? We are 11 batch's in w/ 1318 and people are loving this beer! We have continued to crop 10lbs. Some gush some dont. We pushed 7 generations and on the last two our ending gravity stalled out higher than we wanted. It should be noted that other process's upstream were not executed perfectly.
Hi Matt things are going great. I also love this yeast. I didn't go past 8 generations on my first pitch and am on batch 4 with the new pitch. It top crops like a champ! I've been using a stainless ladle to crop about 10 pounds of this great healthy foamy yeast. It's always a little nerve racking handling the yeast but the new batch always takes right off happy as can be. I have gotten some gushers, but I'm finding that 10 pounds seems to be right, though it doesn't seem that scientific
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