WLP380 gives White Labs a fourth Hefeweizen strain alongside WLP300, and the two aren't interchangeable despite sharing a lab and a general style category: where WLP300 leans hard into banana ester character, WLP380 produces a broader, less specifically banana-forward fruitiness, reading closer to general stone-fruit or apple-adjacent esters than to the assertive banana note WLP300 is chosen for.
At 70-76% attenuation, WLP380's range sits close to WLP300's 72-76%, and the real distinguishing factor between the two is flavour rather than numbers — a brewer who's tried WLP300 and found its banana character too dominant for a particular recipe has a real reason to try WLP380 instead, without giving up wheat-beer-appropriate ester complexity entirely.
Low flocculation keeps a WLP380-fermented beer appropriately hazy, consistent with wheat beer's traditional cloudy presentation across every strain in this family regardless of exactly which ester profile it produces. Hefeweizen and other wheat beer styles wanting fruity complexity without a heavy banana signature are WLP380's clearest home — a genuine third option alongside 3068 and WLP300 for brewers who've found neither of the two more banana-forward strains quite matches what a specific recipe is actually chasing in the glass. Like WLP300, it's sold only as a liquid vial, so the same freshness check applies before brew day — an older vial calls for a bigger starter than a recently dated one, regardless of which of White Labs' Hefeweizen strains ends up in the fermenter.