Wyeast 4366 In A Ris

[brendanos]

Among Wyeast's "very special strains" releases is 4366 "Distillers M-Strain", and upon seeing a few lonely packs in my hbs I thought it was an excellent opportunity to brew something imperial rather than see them go into retirement (approx 4 months old). Wyeast says:

"Available for the Months of June, July and August. Origin: Scotland. For malt-based high gravity fermentations. Very clean and smooth profile. Produces enzymes to break down complex sugars for fermentation. Alcohol tolerance: 20% ABV. For producing Scotch Whiskey, Barley Wines, other very strong beers. Try using for finishing out stock fermentations.

Technical Information:
Flocculation - low; apparent attenuation NA. (65-80 F, 18-27 C)"

Two smack packs went into a two litre starter then into 11L of Russian Imperial Stout for 13L of 1.108 OG wort. Fermenting at 18 degrees, and had a blowoff fixed initially, but after 3 days the krausen has remained pretty subdued, with a peak of about 6cm of dense black stuff. This was my first blowoff, but it didn't show any signs of bubbling (I presume the air was escaping through the lid o-ring), so I replaced it with a two piece so I can monitor activity.

Pitched late on christmas eve, temp on the sticker has remained about 18 consistantly, and already the krausen has reduced to a very (very) thin layer, so i'm thinking the heating belt might have to come out. Not sure how quick a strain like this would ferment out, but i'm holding off on a hydrometer reading for now.

Has anyone used this or a similar type of yeast for a brew? I believe user Andyd has used it to finish a stuck ferment, but I'm interested to know if and what sort of behaviour/results others have experienced.


Cheers team.

 

[brendanos]

RIS on the left, and his baby (small) brother on the right. My housemates like stout so I figured I'd use the second and third runnings on something they can get into to keep their minds off the RIS! Also considering a mild coffee dose to the RIS, so I'll do a test run on the small stout to see how it turns out.

 

[brendanos]

Racked the RIS today onto 33 grams of Styrian Goldings flowers.

Took a hydrometer sample a few days ago, and so far this is tasting very good, and at a specific gravity of 1.025 (just under 12%abv so far) it is mind bogglingly smooth. No noticible trace of alcohol, even at room temperature.

Despite the small head mentioned earlier, this yeast remained calm and collected for the duration of fermentation. The blowoff went back on as I predicted a mad flurry of yeast activity, but it never came. It seems this yeast is very well behaved. So far I would definately recommend it for strong clean beers, predominantly for it's tidy nature, tolerance to a variety of temperatures, attenuation, and it's clean profile (which, admittedly is still to see the final test). It is still munching at the leftovers, but just to give it a hand I added a few mL of modiferm to keep it chugging along for one more week before it goes into bottles (unless the yeast is still bright eyed and bushy tailed then, in which case I might end up with one of the dryest imperial stout's not fermented with wild yeast).

If anyone else is planning a strong, clean brew, give this one a shot.

 

[neonmeate]

this looks like a very interesting brew, what was the grist and hop schedule?

 

[brendanos]

5.5kg Maris Otter
0.25kg Bairds Brown
0.25kg Bairds Roast Barley
0.20kg Bairds Chocolate
0.10kg Weyermann Carawheat
0.05kg Bairds Dark Crystal
0.35kg Bairds Pale Oat Malt

60 mins - 30gm Horizon 11.3%, 30gm Northern Brewer 9.5%
20 mins - 25gm Hersbrucker 3.1%, 10gm Northern Brewer 9.5%
10 mins - 15gm Horizon 9.5%, 20gm Fuggles 5.7%
0 mins - 30gm Hersbrucker 3.1%, 10gm Fuggles 5.7%
Dry - 33gm Styrian Goldings Flowers 3.8% for 5 days.

Who knows what the bitterness will come out at, expected very low utilisation due to the gravity of the boil, but I think I put enough in there to make a dent...

Bottling this afternoon. The yeast has continued pushing out c02 (be it slowly) to this day, I think I'm going to have a pretty dry stout on my hands... which I guess I was hoping for after trying Temtation for inspiration (an imp stout from england) which I found far too sweet/cloying.

I'm quite excited to see how this yeast has performed, considering my less-than-desirable temperature control during the majority of fermentation (it has been sitting in a bath at 19-21 during secondary, should have done this much earlier).

Cheers,
Brendan

 

[neonmeate]

1025 should be plenty of body surely! i'm not much into 1040 FG beers myself. great looking recipe, i will have to do something really big like this soon, just doing a "baby" 9% sort of imperial stout right at the moment, once you get over 10-11% things really start to slow down, even time itself, like an event horizon on a black hole.

5.5kg Maris Otter
0.25kg Bairds Brown
0.25kg Bairds Roast Barley
0.20kg Bairds Chocolate
0.10kg Weyermann Carawheat
0.05kg Bairds Dark Crystal
0.35kg Bairds Pale Oat Malt

60 mins - 30gm Horizon 11.3%, 30gm Northern Brewer 9.5%
20 mins - 25gm Hersbrucker 3.1%, 10gm Northern Brewer 9.5%
10 mins - 15gm Horizon 9.5%, 20gm Fuggles 5.7%
0 mins - 30gm Hersbrucker 3.1%, 10gm Fuggles 5.7%
Dry - 33gm Styrian Goldings Flowers 3.8% for 5 days.

Who knows what the bitterness will come out at, expected very low utilisation due to the gravity of the boil, but I think I put enough in there to make a dent...

Bottling this afternoon. The yeast has continued pushing out c02 (be it slowly) to this day, I think I'm going to have a pretty dry stout on my hands... which I guess I was hoping for after trying Temtation for inspiration (an imp stout from england) which I found far too sweet/cloying.

I'm quite excited to see how this yeast has performed, considering my less-than-desirable temperature control during the majority of fermentation (it has been sitting in a bath at 19-21 during secondary, should have done this much earlier).

Cheers,
Brendan

 

[brendanos]

1025 should be plenty of body surely! i'm not much into 1040 FG beers myself. great looking recipe, i will have to do something really big like this soon, just doing a "baby" 9% sort of imperial stout right at the moment, once you get over 10-11% things really start to slow down, even time itself, like an event horizon on a black hole.

Not when you're brewing with a distillers yeast As I think I mentioned, most of the yeast activity (ie before the krausen settled back in) was finished in three days, even with a slow start. And there was no mess!

 

[marlow_coates]

Brendanos,

How did this turn out? Is it still drinking well? Do you have any left? :icon_cheers:

I am doing this brew next, with the Czars Revenge recipe from brewing classic styles, but am after a lower FG than the book suggests.

I have the US-05 but not sure if it is the best option.

Any suggestions? Have you had any more attempts at this style?

Marlow

 

[marlow_coates]

Udpate on the RIS yeast experiment.

Used The Czars Revenge extract recipe from Brewing Classic Styles.

First one I used the Wyeast Imperial Blend at 19C - had a subdued krausen, and finished in about 7 days though left for 10.
25L brew OG was 1090, finished at 1029.
Tasted pretty damn good coming out of the fermenter, been in bottles for almost 3 weeks, so will taste shortly.
Bulk primed with 140gms sugar

Second one I used the Wyeast Eua De Vie, with an added dry packet of US-05, at 19C - krausen was subdued on this one also, and at 7 days a hydro reading was 1040.
Put on the heat belt and rose to 24C for 7 days, gave it a good swirl also, hydro read 1040 yesterday still, so crash chilled and bottled today.
21L batch this time Hydro read 1096 for OG, and 1040 for FG.
Tasted obviously heavier in body than the first on out of the fermenter, with a sweetness, that I hope gets chewed through a little in coming years.
Weird as I thought the Eua De Vie yeast would eat this stuff up like a termite.
Bulk primed with 110gms sugar

Both brews were bottled into 23 champagne bottles, with plastic stoppers and wire cages - these are for aging.
The left overs were put into capped stubbies for taste testing.

I originally planned to do 4 of these, using both recipes from the Brewing Classic Styles book (the second recipe calls for wheat, whilst the first did not, otherwise pretty similar - more hops in the second one).
The effort put into bottling and making sure these brews are complete has taken it's toll though, and I am sick of making big heavy beers. So revised the plan, and will do 2 of these sort of brews each year, rather than smash out too many at once.

Hope this info can help someone else down the track.
Will repost when I have had a chance to taste these properly.

Marlow