Christmas Beer - New Brewer Experimentation

[rjbergen]

So I brewed my first batch of beer on 1 Sept. 2013. It was a 'Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown Ale' from Adventures in Homebrewing. It is currently in the secondary as we couldn't find the Whirlfloc tablet when we got home. So it's settling for another week and a half or so prior to bottling.

I'm looking at brewing my second batch of beer and think a Christmas spiced ale would be tasty. I found a recipe on Brewtoad that sounded interesting, and modified it to what I could get at my LHBS. It's called Drunk Santa, and I was hoping some of you more experienced brewers could look at it and tell me if I'm crazy, or if this will turn out well.

Also, I'm able to obtain the Danstar Nottingham dry yeast from my LHBS like the original recipe used. I put in WLP039 Nottingham in my recipe, but it seems that it is difficult to obtain. I've been considering making a yeast start, so should I just use the Danstar Nottingham and make a starter?

Thanks for the help. I'm an engineer and enjoy experiments (and I can cook pretty well too), but I'm new to the beer world and still trying to learn what the different extracts, grains, sugars, and spices will do to the final product.

 

[Hello]

I'm still new but have done some reading about starters and such. I found this thread on Notty yeast here. It discusses using it as a starter.

Someone may come along and either confirm or correct me, but this recipe is a higher gravity. As I understand, a single package of yeast does not contain the number of cells needed to ferment higher gravity beers. Based on the link of the Drunk Santa beer, the OG is 1.098 which I believe qualifies. Please, let others answer before you go running off! That being said, I started with this yeast starter link and got tied up reading about yeast starters and higher gravity beers.

That said, I am interested in this recipe as well (thanks to you linking it) and since it doesn't exactly get into the process with the yeast, I would likely pitch the yeast (WPL039 is liquid, right?) and hope for the best. I want to assume that if the recipe only calls for WPL039 then that's all I need. Again, this is the "new brewer" approach where I follow instructions because that's all I can do.

I found this other link about dry notty and WPL039. Check it out.

To answer your question, if you can't get the WPL039 but can get the dry yeast, then you don't really need a starter with dry yeast and it will be fine. May taste different but if you've never tried it before, you can't compare and probably won't care. I don't think this recipe is crazy at all. I'd be excited about it.

I hope some of this makes any sense.

 

[Odin_Brews]

Don't do a starter with dry, only with liquid. With a beer that big you might need more than one packet of dry yeast, check out mrmalty for info on how much yeast cells you need for a beer at 1098. If you get liquid yeast then absolutely do a a starter, there's heaps of info on this forum and other places to tell you how to do it and why. The recipe looks good to me, I do something similar for the holidays, though with about half the alcohol

 

[rjbergen]

Someone may come along and either confirm or correct me, but this recipe is a higher gravity. As I understand, a single package of yeast does not contain the number of cells needed to ferment higher gravity beers. Based on the link of the Drunk Santa beer, the OG is 1.098 which I believe qualifies.
Yes, it is a high gravity beer. It would likely require two packets of dry yeast or a 1L+ starter with liquid yeast.

That said, I am interested in this recipe as well (thanks to you linking it) and since it doesn't exactly get into the process with the yeast, I would likely pitch the yeast (WPL039 is liquid, right?) and hope for the best. I want to assume that if the recipe only calls for WPL039 then that's all I need. Again, this is the "new brewer" approach where I follow instructions because that's all I can do.
I want to caution you. This was a recipe that I developed from the original Drunk Santa on Brewtoad and adapted to use what I can get at my LHBS. Anyone is able to develop recipes on Brewtoad. It's a neat site that has ingredients loaded and you can mix and match to see what happens to gravities, IBUs, and color. They also don't have the capability to input anything other than type of yeast. It is up to the brewer to determine how best to prepare their yeast. I too am a new brewer, and am left to read about various grains and try to imagine their combination and look at how others have used them. Thankfully, I'm a good cook and like to experiment, so this isn't that much different.

To answer your question, if you can't get the WPL039 but can get the dry yeast, then you don't really need a starter with dry yeast and it will be fine. May taste different but if you've never tried it before, you can't compare and probably won't care. I don't think this recipe is crazy at all. I'd be excited about it.
I will use the dry if that's all I can get. Some research has indicated that the WLP039 is a seasonal yeast.[COLOR]

Don't do a starter with dry, only with liquid. With a beer that big you might need more than one packet of dry yeast, check out mrmalty for info on how much yeast cells you need for a beer at 1098. If you get liquid yeast then absolutely do a a starter, there's heaps of info on this forum and other places to tell you how to do it and why. The recipe looks good to me, I do something similar for the holidays, though with about half the alcohol

I'll go back and check their calculator. I've played with it before, but I haven't used it for this recipe.

 

[beerza269]

Welcome to the addiction

Nottingham is a great all around yeast.
Check out ebay for a good yeast stirrer,magnet,and a 2000 ml erlemeyer flask. Trust me ,brewing 3 years,started out with mr.beer 2 gallons,went to 5 gallons,then 10 gallons for the past year.If you like good beer it will happen to you.
Best yeast starter,get a 3 lb bag of Briess gOlden light dme) dry malt extract), dissolve 1cup dme in 1000 ml water then add yeast. I start mine the night before.
Words of advice would be always use good ingredients and good water.

Have fun,john

 

[dca]

I highly recommend the BrewR app, you can adjust the ingredients and see what it does to SRM, IBU, ABV, etc...and its free! You can even add new custom ingredients, if you know the specs.