The Auber PID and Manchester Ale Yeast

Before taking a week off for Spring Break, I had determined that the Auber PID I wrote about in The First Post had a defect and sent it back to Auber Instruments for repair (see what’s a PID if you have no idea what I’m talking about). Auber was very helpful once it had been determined that I was not the problem. I got an email while I was gone indicating that they had found a cold solder joint , that it had been fixed and shipped back to me.


Upon returning home, I reinstalled the PID in the control panel of the PAWS brewery and calibrated the platinum temperature sensor (see RTD). This PID is used for the whirlpool and cold break step where the just boiled wort (unfermented beer) is pumped through a plate chiller and back into the boil kettle so that it spins the liquid around so that any solids like hop material and cold break gathers in the center of the pot. Once the wort temperature has been reduced to below 80 degrees F, it can be transferred to the fermenter.


Sorry about all the techno-babble, but I wanted to keep this section short, because unless you are really into automation and control, you are not going to care.


I had planned on brewing a Mayan Porter today but my yeast is not cooperating with me. Once a year White Labs and Wyeast both produce some “upscale” yeast. My current leaning is to White Labs, but I have used Wyeast many times with great success. So I purchased some of White Labs “Platinum” yeast for this Porter recipe that I plan on spicing up with Chocolate, Cinnamon and Chipotle. Of the two platinum yeasts I purchased, I planned on using the Manchester Ale yeast (WLP038) since it was cleaner yeast (meaning it didn’t provide a lot of additional flavors to the beer).


I made a starter solution and after reading that other brewers had been having trouble with this yeast, I added several yeast nutrients to the starter that I usually reserve for mead or very high gravity brewing. After 36 hours of riding the stir plate, nothing… The gravity of the starter had dropped a paltry 12 points and it looked very much the same as before I dumped the vial of yeast in. Following the directions on White Labs website, I emailed them with the particulars and the lot number of the yeast I was using. They recommended I execute Plan B, which in my case was to wake up a jar of yeast I had sleeping in the fridge in the garage. They were very helpful and will be sending me a coupon for a free vial of yeast as a replacement. So the Mayan Porter will be using White Labs WLP002 which is one of my favorite English Ale yeasts (which is why I try and keep some on hand).


Tomorrow, when I plan on brewing the Mayan Porter, I post about how that went and the actual recipe used.