aiptasia
Well-Known Member
I brewed up a Strong Scotch Ale a few days ago and had planned on pitching some Windsor yeast into it. Due to poor planning on my part, I didn't have enough distilled water to add to the boil at the end to account for batch size/volume. A little too much boiled off, and I wound up with a 4.25 gallon batch instead of a 5 gallon batch. This increased the FG from 1.090 to 1.115.
I love the character of Windsor Yeast in my Scotch Ales. It's a delicious, authentic British ale yeast with great fruit ester composition. It's also notoriously slow fermenting, a moderate attenuator and poorly flocculant. With this batch of beer, I had great fears that the Windsor yeast would'nt be able to bring down the gravity of the beer to a sweetness level where I wanted it. I'd like the beer to make it into the 1.020's and not have the yeast crap out any higher than about 1.028.
My solution was to look around for another yeast to blend into the Scotch Ale. I decided to try a yeast that i'd used in everything from Cider to Sake to White wine, and that was Lalvin EC-1118. It's a highly alcohol tolerant yeast that works well for restarting stuck fermentations and flocs hard out of beer to form a rock hard yeast cake.
I'm hoping EC-1118 is similar in flavor component in this Scotch Ale to the other types of alcohol i've made with it. It imparted a very clean, slightly floral note to the traditional Sake I made with it and I find it to have a very complex floral aroma.
This should be a very interesting Scotch Ale. Two packets of reconstituted Windsor vs. one packet of reconstituted 1118 are currently raging away at peak krausen. I had to clean up a small amount of blow off today and it's just a raging, seething storm of fermentation at the moment.
Anyone else like using EC-1118 in beer?
I love the character of Windsor Yeast in my Scotch Ales. It's a delicious, authentic British ale yeast with great fruit ester composition. It's also notoriously slow fermenting, a moderate attenuator and poorly flocculant. With this batch of beer, I had great fears that the Windsor yeast would'nt be able to bring down the gravity of the beer to a sweetness level where I wanted it. I'd like the beer to make it into the 1.020's and not have the yeast crap out any higher than about 1.028.
My solution was to look around for another yeast to blend into the Scotch Ale. I decided to try a yeast that i'd used in everything from Cider to Sake to White wine, and that was Lalvin EC-1118. It's a highly alcohol tolerant yeast that works well for restarting stuck fermentations and flocs hard out of beer to form a rock hard yeast cake.
I'm hoping EC-1118 is similar in flavor component in this Scotch Ale to the other types of alcohol i've made with it. It imparted a very clean, slightly floral note to the traditional Sake I made with it and I find it to have a very complex floral aroma.
This should be a very interesting Scotch Ale. Two packets of reconstituted Windsor vs. one packet of reconstituted 1118 are currently raging away at peak krausen. I had to clean up a small amount of blow off today and it's just a raging, seething storm of fermentation at the moment.
Anyone else like using EC-1118 in beer?
