ESB decision

I have an ESB recipe that calls for a 154 mash to make a medium body beer.  The recipe is your standard ESB recipe, maris otter and some caramel malt and hops after that.  The author of the recipe says to use S-04 to get the gravity down as much as possible.  He claims, based on his experience, that the Liquid ESB yeasts won't attenuate all the way down and will leave the beer a little sweet and I have no reason to not believe him or think he doesn't know what he's doing.  He sounds credible and knowledgeable so I'm going to proceed with the assumption that he is correct.  I know I've had problems with that yeast getting below 1.020 on occasion myself.  We'll the problem is, I have WL002 available, and S-04 is not.  So far as I can tell I have two options:

1.) I can do as he suggest in this situation and mash between 150-152 to make the beer more fermentable which will get the gravity down but I'm giving up some body or

2.)  Add some maize to the recipe to add to the fermentablity.  It's my understanding that a lot of ESB brewers will add kettle sugar or mash adjuncts to solve this problem.  Given that I've seen a lot of ESB recipes with maize (and i have some left over from my last failed ESB attempt) I thought that might be a better way to go?  If I go this route, how much maize should I add and do I simply add it or would this also involve removing some of the base grain?  

Thoughts:  

Help is greatly appreciated!!!!  

Are you giving the yeasties plenty of Oxygen for building up their army?

I've been adding pure O2 for about 90 seconds with excellent results.

If I was really worried about the brew being to sweet, I'd lower the mash temp a bit, thin the mash, use yeast nutrients, do a yeast starter, and add lots of oxygen.

Maize...no experience, sorry.

Post your results whatever they may be.  ESB's are high on my to-brew list.  What does your recipe look like?

cheers

What Sickbrew says.

The only way sweetness should be an issue is if your alcohol gets so high it kills the yeast
In which case you can get a neutral wine or champagne yeast and pitch again.

I don't know what the source you have is talking about when it says that liquid yeast cont attenuate.

The trick with any yeast is not to pitch a wimpy amount.
You want to pitch a nice bunch of yeast  and the single best way to do this is with a starter.
Wyeast sells a ACTIVATOR which has a little packet inside which you break without bursting the  exterior package and five a few hours to swell up.  This is supposed to be a pitch volume that is appropriate. I've used  it and it works as advertised.

Wimpy yeast pitches can produce off flavors and other weird things.

Aldo oxygen in the  primary is helpful to get your ferment roiling along happily. 
Lots of gus use a sparging stone and a bottle of pure O.
I oxygenate by letting the siphon from the Brew Kettle splash and make foam the whole time I'm draining the BK off.
It works for me.
Others shake their carboys vigorously with some amount of wort in them, others use a paint mixer on a drill.

The shaking the  carboy trick is both a lot of work and I think dangerous.
Recently I read about a guy whose  carboy just decided that it wanted to break in his arms and sliced his tendons .
Not bumping nothing  untoward:  just a level of internal stresses in the glass and the moment came together while he  was holding it during cleaning.

or u can do as i do pitch 1and 1 half Cups Liquid yeast i get from my local brewer and it always works, the brewers are most of the time very happy to give you some, just ask

Well, there is no local brewer here in Grand Forks, North Dakota so that one is out.  As far as the liquid yeast attenuating down as far as dry yeast goes I would refer to BeerSmith itself.  The recipe calls for a final gravity of around 1.014 with a starting gravity of 1.054(or 55 cant remember off the top of my head).  The author suggests getting the beer down this far really helps dry it out which adds to the character of the beer. 

So, I entered the recipe in using both liquid and dry yeast.  the estimated finishing gravity with the liquid yeast 1.018 the estimated finishing gravity with dry yeast 1.014 which is what the recipe calls for.  So, you can call into question the authors knowledge if you wish, I've certainly never met the man and aside from reading some of his posts on another board I really have now idea about his brewing knowledge but it is consistent with BeerSmith?

when i say liquid Yeast i am talking about the yeast you get from a brewery. I quess here in germany where i live it is easy to get both Top and Bottum yeasts from there, and i can say for myself and others here that brew with it, it is very very good. There is not a dry yeast that you can buy that can come close to a fresh Liquid yeast from a brewery. I just brewed a 5 Gallon batch 2 weeks ago with a 1.057 og and finshed with a 1.009, it was a lager using fresh Yeast from our local brewery, but that's just my opinion, just trying to help