I'm going to be brewing my biggest beer to date. Its a Stone RIS clone. I got the recipe out of the BYO clone book. It calls for WLP002 for yeast. I looked it up on the White Labs website and it says it only has a Medium Alcohol Tolerance. The recipe says this will be 10% when its done going from an OG of 1.096 to 1.020. Should I look go against the suggestion and find something with a better alcohol tolerance? Maybe Wyeast 1056?
If you pitch enough yeast and oxygenate properly that yeast should be okay. However it is relatively agreed upon (on many other sites) that Stone's yeast more closely resembles WLP007 than WLP002.
I'd let the 002 take it's turn if that's the yeast you want to use. If if falls short of when you want to be, you should have some US-05 on hand to finish the job. I believe Nottingham is also a dry yeast that has an English profile. It's probably good for 12-14% ABV.
I'd pitch 2 vials of whatever WL yeast you choose or use a stepped up starter for a RIS clone. Thou I agree on the 007 stone strain
Two vials is going to be a little light for a 1.096 wort. Compounded by the relatively high ABV it has to survive. My advice... use a big starter, stepped up if necessary to get an appropriate estimated cell count.
