Windsor

Windsor is a great yeast. I use it in my Burton light, chocolate stout and oatmeal stout. It don't ferment down as low as notty or T-58 but gives a nice tasty beer. B sure to have plenty of headspace. It is a strong fermenter

 

Windsor used to be my yeast of choice for fermenting English Bitter Ales - I would ferment on the upper temperature range (e.g., 70 degrees F) to encourage esters. The flavors were fruity (I do not have anything more specific than fruity). A few years ago I 'discovered' Wyeast 1469 and that is now my preferred yeast for English Bitter Ales.

I still use Danstar Windsor once a year for my Robust Porter. I like this strain for this batch since is does not attenuate well and my resulting Robust Porter has a lot of body - it is 'chewy'.

If you co-pitch with another yeast strain then the beer will likely attenuate well (i.e., have a low FG).

Cheers!

 

I went on a streak of using Windsor. I tend to be on the colder side of things but I would say I got some plum like flavors the most. A buddy said he got pear, and my father picked out a hint of peach... Not sure who was right as we were all drinking the same beer... I like it for plum like flavors in darker beers.

 

I used it one time and wasn’t a fan. May have to try again as that was my second batch.

 

Well, I just used it in an IPA that's hitting the dry hop keg tonight. I used it 80/20 with S-04. First time using it but I'll stop back and give my gravity sample impressions. I can tell you it is a fast beast of a yeast. I pitched on a Saturday around 2. Had airlock activity before I went to bed, woke up to crazy activity Sunday. By Monday morning, krausen was already pretty well gone. I didn't rehydrate.

 

It's been many years for me. I recall always liking the flavor, but not liking that it took forever to flocculate.

 

Kegged last night and took a sample. Very interesting yeast. A lot of bready, yeasty aromas off the bat. I know it's a low floccer and my strategy to use S-04 to aid in that didn't work. Probably have to split closer to 50/50. Flavor initially wasn't too far off. A lot of yeasty, bread notes but I figure that's a lot of yeast still in suspension (I don't full crash before kegging). I put my cylinder in the freezer for a bit to drop as much yeast as I could. I tried again and got a lovely fruit salad note. Reminded me of hawaiian punch almost. I think it will be a nice compliment for the citra/galaxy I'm dry hopping it with.

On another note, they aren't lying about its attenuation. I got 69% which is a tick higher than the 65% they advertise. I again was hoping the S-04 would help in this department which leads me to think I need to get that split closer to 50/50 next time. First time using it, I think I'll continue to explore with it. I've read its in the same family as T-58... just a POF- version. Which could make it a great candidate for big biotransformation.

 

I've never used any of these yeasts. The one thing I'll mention is that according to the manufacturer WB-06 is var. diastaticus (link to PDF), meaning it is not a good choice if you want to avoid over-attenuation.

 

Windsor is a little estery but not a ton, at least in the 64-68F range that typifies my usage. It doesn’t attenuate as well as many would like but I think it nice for low gravity British beers. I’m hard pressed to attribute a specific fruit to it.

 

@skleice, please do report back on how your beer turned out.

You made mention of "The WB will only be 1-2% though" and even though it is a small percentage of the yeast you are pitching it seems to me that it will 'perform' bigger than that since there will be plenty of 'leftover food' (i.e., sugars that will not be consumed by Windsor/T-58).

Best of luck with this batch!

Cheers!