English Ale yeast

[BigWilley]

Anyone have any experience with White Labs Dry English Ale Yeast (WLP007)? I am interested in trying it out and was just wondering if anyone uses it regularly and how it performs, tastes etc.

[malty1]

I have used the Dry English Ale yeast for barleywine or other high gravity beers (regular English Ale yeast doesn't attenuate enough). I normally just use the regular English Ale yeast for all other brews.
I did not notice any different characteristics when comparing the two yeasts, but I brew very different styles with them. However, I only use the Dry English Ale yeast for 1 - 2 pitches, instead of the 10 - 15 for regular English Ale yeast.
Both yeasts flocculate extremely well. Ferment is a bit longer with the Dry (approx. 3 days), but it has more work to do.

Cheers,
Aaron

[Mr.hops]

Ah yes,
If it's what I think it is , it's Whitbread's ale yeast or perhaps what they now call "Nottingham".
An historic staple of the early micro-brew days. Probabaly the original west coast "Red ale" yeast, it's very flocculant, and will attenuate almost all of anything you give it. Kinda' fruity and malty...I liked it , used it for years...but it became unreliable for quality consistancy (wild yeasts from sorce) so it was cleaned-up and renamed "Nottingham" which I found having slightly less dept of character , but very clean,. consistant performer. You can pre-hydrate it or just sprinkle it on top of the wert....little differance in start-up time.

Good luck.

[Benjy Edwards]

I have used wlp007 quite a lot. It works very well at attenuating, I even had one barley wine with an OG of 1107 that dropped 10 1.018 in one week. Incredible. After another couple of weeks the gravity was 1.014 and was actually too dry!

Overall, performs very well. When reusing many times (8 to 10 reuses), the yeast can mutate and develop a Belgian flavour.

[BigWilley]

Just an update on the English Ale experiment. I have used White Labs WLP0007 Dry English Ale Yeast for a few months now and so far i have been pleased with the results. It produces an extremely dry (hence the name) beer with pronounced bready toasted notes. It seems to accentuate malt without losing the hops. I am comparing it to American Ale which to me is very clean and balanced. The english works great for Pale Ales and strong ales. It is almost a touch to dry and bready for my tastes so I have been playing with mash temps and malt bills a bit. One note that is worth mentioning is that harvesting yeast can be a pain. This stuff flocs and clumps together like nothing I have ever seen. It is very hard to fill a keg with yeast. And I always need pressure at least 10lbs to rack it off during fermentation. It drops very clear quickly. i am amazed at how fast it works.

[theburden]

I've always been a fan on (WLP013) London Ale. Leaves a certain dryness to your beer but also gives you a nice maltiness that a lot of American Ale yeasts ferment out.