Danstar Windsor Ale Yeast: Optimum temp: 64–70° F
Any general information out there on this yeast? Should you keep it closer to 64 than to 70? I have done about 6 batches and this one finished with the highest FG; 1.019 (after two weeks of primary fermentation). Will take a gravity reading this weekend after it finishes two weeks in secondary fermentation.
I don’t know if I’ll use this yeast anymore. It’s fine, it makes decent beer, but it doesn’t attenuate worth a darn. Fermentation is very very fast, like 36 hours, then it hits terminal gravity right away. If you wait it will not ferment down any farther, I can promise you. Fortunately, even though the final gravity is always high, it doesn’t taste sweet or syrupy, it tastes like normal well attenuated beer. So I would guess it might be most appropriate to use this yeast strain in so-called “session beers” where you want a lot of flavor but not a lot of alcohol. It might be useful for something like that. But otherwise… meh.
For what it’s worth, I recently used Wyeast 1099 and got the same or even worse results – attenuation for that yeast in my experience was only like 50%. I kid you not. I left the beer in primary for an additional month and it got no lower. Mash temperature on that batch was about 154 F, so that might have hurt it, maybe I should have mashed at 148-150 F like I normally do. But man, that attenuation just… stinks. The beer tasted fine, it’s just… such low alcohol.
IMO, the best thing you can do with that yeast is throw it away and get something else.
I agree. It’s way too estery for my tastes. It doesn’t settle worth a flip either. I’ve had a bitter in the keg for 4 months and it won’t clear.
Throw it in the boil as food for good yeast :?:
Throw it in the boil as food for good yeast :?: [/quote]
I don’t know how much that really helps, but it couldn’t hurt.
