What a chunky, funky beast that stuff is. Wowsers McTavish.
I used it about 6 weeks ago and the neck of my carboy cracked, even with a blow-off tube attached. It’s the Schwarzenegger of yeast, at least in my 1.5 yrs of brewing.
Best…yeast…ever!
Slight British character, consistent attenuation near 80%, ferments out completely in 3 days, rarely if ever stalls, and drops like a ton of brick when done for crystal clear beer.
I suspect your carboy had problems prior to the yeast
morticaixavier suggested the krausen clogged the tube, which created too much pressure inside the carboy with nowhere for the CO2 escape, then viola, the neck cracked. I bottled over the weekend though and the uncarbonated sample I tasted still came out great. Awesome yeast.
I’m thinking of using it instead of 001 on some beers. I really like chico and have a good feel for it but it takes forever to clear sometimes.
It’s Stone’s house yeast as well
WLP007 is similar to Stone’s yeast, it is not their “house” yeast. They have a propietary yeast strain.
I stand corrected. I thought Mitch Steele said it was on a CYBI episode, it must have been what he recommended to use.
Stone has never outwardly said what strain their house yeast is other than it is proprietary, a British strain that has been conditioned to meet their standards, and is not available to homebrewers. Mitch and Stone recomend WLP002 or WLP007 when attempting to recreate any Stone beers.
I recently brewed a coffee stout using the WLP 007. It looked like egg drop soup on the stir plate. I’m now 10 days into fermentation. Checked the gravity last night and was at 1.016. OG was 1.064. Activity is nearly absent in the airlock too. Gonna keg this weekend and add my cold steeped coffee. Next up, ESB. Gonna use the east cake from the stout.
I noticed the same thing in my 007 starter last weekend. My GF walked by it and called to me “Hey! There’s something wrong with our starter!”
Extremely flocculant stuff. I had a flask of 1098 right next to it which I heard was the Wyeast brand of the same strain. While it was very cloudy it had nothing near the egg drop/cold break appearance that the 007 started did.
It’s some good stuff for sure. I had not used this yeast in quite a while. The stout is tasting very nice. It may just become my new house favorite :). As far as the Egg Drop Soup look goes, the Wyeast 3787 (Trappist High Gravity) does the same thing.
Great for bigger beers too like RIS or Barleywines. Works every time!
I’m gonna have to disagree with everybody on this one. I’ve used it twice, on 2 different styles and it left a yeasty flavor that I could not drink. I turned one keg into malt vinegar that was good, I left one keg in the fridge over a year before it was drinkable and I gave a second batch away for birthday parties.
Well, that’s not what I wanted to hear.
So, in case it sucks; how do you make malt vinegar?
I have never had any undesireable characteristics from this yeast and my beers have always been quite enjoyable shortly after reaching TG.
My experience as well.
What temp did you ferment at? This yeast has a tendency to work very fast and very hard and the temps can rise quite high very quickly if you don’t have temperature control on your yeast during the active part of fermentation. That may be the reason for the off flavors?
It is about as easy as pouring some unpasturized vinegar from the store into the beer. Seal it, set it someplace out of the sun and let it go. Check it now and then. When it get strong enough for you, it’s done.
Paul
You may have a point. This happened back in the mid 90’s when I fermented my beers in the living room at 72F ambient.
But, with the keg that sat in the fridge a year all the yeast had completely dropped out into a fairly solid layer in the keg and the beer was delicious. Also some of my friends loved this beer(but then they’re friends drinking free beer) from the start, so I attributed the off flavors to residual yeast.