Apex London vs Apex Sherwood?

[J A]

I want to buy a brick so I'd have to commit to one or the other for a lot of batches.
These yeasts are supposed to be equivalent to S-04 and Nottingham, respectively, but I'm not sure I trust that they'd really be equivalent. I know that a few here have used the Apex stuff pretty extensively. What about these two in particular?

 

[vinobrew]

Hopefully you get the experienced feedback you are looking for. I use Google Gemini AI on researches like this, and sometimes I'm surprised what it comes back with. As with anything in AI, yes, it does make "mistakes", but other times, it can be educational. I did a quick comparison/contrast of the 4 yeasts, and this is what it had to say. The comparison is in a PDF Shared Folder for anyone to look at. I actually had the same question but currently starting the journey doing hands on with an English Porter using Apex London. Good luck!

 

[J A]

Hopefully you get the experienced feedback you are looking for. I use Google Gemini AI on researches like this, and sometimes I'm surprised what it comes back with. As with anything in AI, yes, it does make "mistakes", but other times, it can be educational. I did a quick comparison/contrast of the 4 yeasts, and this is what it had to say. The comparison is in a PDF Shared Folder for anyone to look at. I actually had the same question but currently starting the journey doing hands on with an English Porter using Apex London. Good luck!

I like the notion of the London because I think the S-04 style yeast has more character but the Sherwood/Nottingham offers potentially better attenuation with somewhat less tendency to stall and drop. Also, I tend to like the "clean" finish of Nottingham when I've used it. I definitely like Notty for Irish Red but I think I've preferred my Dry Irish Stout when I've used S-04. I do know that I've used S-04 for American Pales and Blonds and have liked the results but I suppose that Nottingham would probably do a similar job. I've used Nottingham for Cider and that worked out quite well. Don't remember whether I've used S-04 for Ciders, though there's no reason it wouldn't do just fine.

The most recent beer that I did with S-04 was the non-hoppy half of my Golden Ale split. That was a straight-up pub-style and turned out to be a pretty superb beer. I did a very similar beer for a party last winter and used S-04 for that one...also a very good beer, especially given extremely fast grain to glass turnaround on that one.

The most recent example I have of Nottingham is my Brown Ale that I've just gotten tapped and running over the last couple of days. That one is just what I like in a malty beer - not too sweet but with lots of caramel, toasty notes and just a hint of dark roast in the finish.

 

[vinobrew]

I did a direct pitch of Apex London dry yeast on my English Porter (OG 1.052). As you can see from the graph, it mostly finished up in the first 48 hours. The target FG was 1.016 and it took a few more days to chew away to finally reach that FG number. Today is cold crash and I'll likely pack out tomorrow. The intent of this Porter is to carbonate and mature in my fridge for 30 days and put it on tap during American Thanksgiving week. I'll collect and wash the yeast to finally do some cryogenic storage on it. (15 5ml tubes). Leftover slurry goes to fridge for later use. I do have a Parti-gyle brew scheduled for Thanksgiving week, where I was going to do an Imperial Nut Brown (~4 gallons at 1.081 OG - Nottingham) with the 1st runnings and a 2nd English Best Bitter (~12 gallons at 1.043 OG - Safale 04) with the 2nd runnings. Having this discussion today, I might split the 2nd 12 gallons and do a Safale 04 vs Apex London comparison. I haven't used Apex Sherwood, but may have to pick some up to do a small batch Nottingham vs Apex Sherwood batch.

 

[Donoroto]

The tilt is not always accurate at those 1-point changes. It sometimes is a function of the crud from the krausen finally washing off the tilt’s tube.

Not saying that’s what happened here, but I’ve had it happen several times