WYEAST Ringwood Ale yeast??

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bredmakr
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WYEAST Ringwood Ale yeast??

Post by bredmakr »

my local shop recommended using the WYEAST Ringwood Ale yeast for my upcoming brown ale. I've never used this yeast and was wondering if anyone has an opinion. I did notice that it is not listed on WYEAST's own site as a yeast for brown ales. perhaps I was given this recommendation because they didn't have anything better?
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#1187.... Wyeast Ringwood Ale...

Post by Mesa Maltworks »

I have used this strain a couple of times. It is a very unique yeast sourced from Europe that requires a bit of special handling. The beer produced with it has a high amount of fruity esters and a complex malty flavor that is really unique. It is very flocculant (settles easily) and therefore will produce a very clear beer without finings or filtration.

Now... on to the special handling... due to the way this yeast ferments, it produces a LARGE amount of diacetyl (butter, toffee, butterscotch flavors)and requires a substantial diacetyl rest be performed after fermentation is complete to allow the yeast to re-absorb some of the diacetyl to a reasonable level. This yeast seems to ferment best in the mid-60 to low 70 degree F. range. DO NOT USE THIS YEAST IF YOU CANNOT KEEP THE TEMPERATURES IN THIS RANGE ! It will produce very harsh esters at higher temperatures as well as fusal alcohols (think BIG HANGOVER !).

Now as for style appropriateness, the specs for a traditional brown ale is as follows: Low bitterness, sweet and malty, low esters and low diacetyl, light to medium body.

Hmmm... now look back at the description of the yeast characteristics and it seems to me this is not a good match for this style choice.

Among the Wyeast line, I'd recommend 1338 (Wissenschaftliche Ale, a really cool yeast that is criminally overlooked by brewers which produces the best rocky head I've ever seen on an ale), 1968 (London ESB), 1099 (Whitbred Ale, not as dry fermenting as 1968), 1084 (Irish Ale, medium flocculant though), 1318 (London III, fruity strain that finishes sweet) or 1028 (London Ale, medium flocculant with a bold flavor that finishes dry.)

Hope this helped !


Eric
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Good tip

Post by Fraoch »

Thanks for the tip on 1099, the 1968 finished rather too dry for my pale ale. Also isnt the Ringwood the yeast that requires a high level of airation prior to pitching and is also known as the "8day yeast" due to its ability to ferment out and drop through within this time period. Great for a quick turn around.
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"Aeration" ? ... Maybe Rousing ?....

Post by Mesa Maltworks »

The aeration level that is required by yeast uptake is the same regardless of strain, but the ppm of oxygen injected into the wort may need to vary by specific gravity due to increased difficulty in getting oxygen into solution. These issues are not ones that effect flocculation rates, only yeast lag time before the onset of fermentation.

I believe what you are referring to is not pre-pitch oxygenation, but rather fermentation rousing. This would correspond to your next to the last sentence: "...also known as the "8day yeast" due to its ability to ferment out and drop through within this time period."

It is indeed true that when using the most flocculant strains, rousing is sometimes required to place the yeast back in solution to attenuate the beer to the target gravity. This is accomplished most commonly in the pro-brew setting by underletting the fermenter with CO2 or, in a homebrew setting, simply shaking up the fermenter. Since the beer is already fermenting, you don't want to introduce oxygen into the wort.

An example of a strain that most often requires this handling is Wyeast's 1968 London ESB. I have used this one a bunch and on one occasion, I couldn't get the beer to flow out of my 20 barrel (620 gallons/1.17 hl) conical's bottom valve due to the density of the yeast pack !!!

Eric
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excellent discussion

Post by bredmakr »

Excellent information. I already have the Ringwood and will make a starter this evening because the pouch is ready to go. This is for a special event and I want to make a really good beer between now and 8/17. Fast turn around is an objective. With these two points in mind would you recommend I pitch something else? See 'Leos Brown' for the recipe I'm going with. Thanks for the help.
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Someone will disagree, I am sure, but...

Post by stumpwater »

I have had very good turn around time using the dry Cooper's yeast. I know that many will tell me that I am crazy but I have made some excellent beer with this yeast. The beer is usually ready to carbonate within 12 days and has worked for me in bitters/porter/and in an alt beer recipe.
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I stand corrected

Post by Fraoch »

I read that this yeast requires a high level of aeration PRIOR to pitching and can be a real pain to use for this matter. I have used it myself and my notes indicate an extremely good rocky head for the primary but took some agitation during 2ndary to "kick start". Just goes to show that experience is better than non specific information. As always - thanks for the insight.
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diacetyl rest???

Post by bredmakr »

please define diacetyl rest.
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Diacetyl Rest Defined....

Post by Mesa Maltworks »

A diacetyl rest is where the yeast is allowed to re-absorb most of the diacetyl that it produced during primary fermentation. This is accomplished two different ways depending on the fermentation temperature:

1) If the fermentation temperature was below 60 degrees (mostly lagers), you allow the beer to warm to 60~65 degrees and hold it there for 48 hours prior to cooling it to conditioning temperature. You do not have to worry about ester formation at this point because the yeast's metabolism is focused on producing glycogen as a food source in preparation for dormancy. It is this process that allows for the diacetyl uptake. A lot of research has been done with how to cool lagers for conditioning... due to the diacety re-absorption issue, it is recommended to drop the temperature gradually rather than crash cooling it to 30 deg. F. as fast as possible. This allows the yeast to stay active as long as possible to achieve maximal re-absorption and does not stress the yeast, which reduces the potential of off flavors being produced in the present beer and ensures that subsequent re-pitches will be in great health.

<OR>

2) If fermented at 60 degrees or warmer (ales only), you simply let it continue to rest at that temperature for 48 hours after primary fermentation has completed. Then you rack to the secondary and condition at room temperature or gradually cool or crash cool it, depending on the style, to condition.

With lagers, after the diacetyl rest, I follow the gradual ramping technique, cooling it by 2~3 deg. F. per day until reaching 30 deg. F. and holding 30 ~ 90 days. With ales, I gradually cool them to 45 deg. F. (typically from 60~65 deg F.) and hold 5 days, then crash to 30 deg. f. and hold for an additional 5 days.

There are styles where you do not want to use a diacetyl rest as a detectible diacetyl level is acceptable or even expected. Examples of this are found within the Pale Ale family: Ordinary Bitter, Special Bitter, ESB, and Mild as well as English Brown Ales, Scottish Ales... etc. All of these styles have varying levels of diacetyl that are acceptable, so a brief diacetyl rest may be used or no rest at all. There is even an example of a commercially produced lager (!) that uses a very brief diacetyl rest to ensure a slight diacetyl note.... Pilsner Urquell.

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Question on diacetyl

Post by stumpwater »

How do you determine exact diacetyl level in your beer in order to know when enough is enough? Guessing is fine for the moment, but I have an overwhelming need to know the science.
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Diacetyl Level Determination....

Post by Mesa Maltworks »

Without a laboratory chemical analysis, you can't determine the ppm of diacetyl contained within a beer.

You can train yourself (see exception below) to detect levels of diacetyl and equate that to a known ppm based on your palate. You need to obtain food grade diacetyl from a chemical supplier & micro pipettes and a graduated cylinder from a lab supplier. You then take a (I'm sorry to utter this) Budweiser and measure 100 ml of the beer and begin spiking it with measured amounts of the diacetyl from the pipette until you can just detect it in the beer. This level will function as your personal base line minimum threshold. From this ratio of Budweiser to diacetyl, you can determine the parts per million of diacetyl.

You then use various amounts above this level repeatedly to hone your palate for diacetyl detection. Once you have become able to reliably detect it, you can then sample commercial brews that are known to be representative of a style that is allowed to have a detectible diacetyl level and estimate how much is present. You can then take this information and incorporate it into your brewing techniques where desired.

Now the exceptions: ~40% of people have a hard time detecting diacetyl for some odd reason. Worse yet, 25% of those persons will be totally unable to detect it at anything but the most obsurd levels. This was illustrated to me while earning my diploma at Siebel.

The best way to learn flavor and fault detection short of going to a brewing school is to hook up with a homebrew club that offers BJCP (Beer Judge Certification Program) classes. They often have methods to spike beer to train for flavor evaluation much as I have described.

I submitted a rather lengthy chart on all of the most common flavors (fault or otherwise), their descriptions, manifestations, causes, spiking agents for training and methods of avoidance to beerflavor.com. This chart was orginally available to the public, but they took it and placed it in their for pay area. Thus ended my relationship with those folks because I did not intend for my work to be used to generate revenue for their site ! Since this unethical move, I no longer submit technical articles for web site publication out of fear of a repeat of that scenario. I believe I still have a copy of it and will e-mail it to those interested, but if it shows up on a private site, I'll bail from here just like I did from beerflavor.

Eric
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Please send me a copy.

Post by Brewer2001 »

Eric,

Having gone through a similar, but abreviated, fault identification training during my studies with the ABG I would like to fine tune my pallet. Your secrets are safe with me. During me internship the information that was presented in our tasting sessions was put to good use. I was having a sample of a 'Wild Rice' ale Dick Cantwell and crew had brewed earlier in the year. The assistant brewer was describing the problems they had with the batch and remarked about the flavor. The aroma and taste of hexanoate almost made the ale undrinkable, but he didn't seem to notice it or identify the flavor. I guess education is sometimes a good thing.

Please email me a copy.
Thank you,

Tom Flanagan
tjflanagan@covad.net

PS. We used Coors Lite for our tests, I think it made the samples stand out more...we all hated the 2,4,6-trichloroanisole, dubbed 'musty'. For that reason our took the moniker of "The Fusty Class". We had Steve Parkes in stiches. Steve is a cruel man he had us taste this 'crap' (Coors Lite) with all these additives that you could not wash off if you used caustic, then allowed us to 'taste' the for different styles. Who could taste?
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No secrets...

Post by Mesa Maltworks »

Tom;

The stuff in this document are not secrets and are available elsewhere, just not compiled together. It sounds as though you went through training very similar to me. This guide, however, is not super advanced, just the basic flavors homebrewers wonder about. You most likely already know about these, but I am happy to forward it to you anyway as soon as I find my copy.... I forgot it was on my laptop, not my present computer. The laptop's hard drive keeps freaking out and won't run windows any longer, so I'll have to copy it over from DOS. Yet another reason for frequent backups !


Eric
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