Adding some corn sugar to simulate dry yeast

I have a limited selection of yeasts at my location, and it's difficult to get certain strains like Dry English yeast. I recently read a number of recipes with this kind of yeast that I'd like to try, but I worry that if I use the regular "English" yeasts I have handy (mostly Windsor and WB-33) it would end up too sweet. My thought was to try to compensate for the sweetness by adding a bit of extra corn sugar to the wort to dry it out a bit.

Any thoughts? Any recommendations for dosage?
Thanks

Adding the corn sugar might lighten the body by creating more alcohol, but it's all the unfermentable sugars left over that makes the body sweet. Maybe add a little more hops bitterness to compensate or try to mash longer at a lower temperature. Don't think the teast is going to make that big of a difference in the sweetness of the beer.

If your all grain try mashing lower (about 4 degrees) than the recipe calls for, and after the first 5-7 days of fermentation raise thetemp to 74 to let it fermenent out all the way. Also you can always get yeast online, just try to find the closest retailer and order an ice pack with it, you could also look into harvesting yeast from bottle conditioned beers that are available in your area.

pm5k00 said:

[...]Also you can always get yeast online, just try to find the closest retailer and order an ice pack with it, you could also look into harvesting yeast from bottle conditioned beers that are available in your area.

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He lives in Israel, not Austin. You can imagine things are just a wee bit different there...

Cheers

day_trippr said:

He lives in Israel, not Austin. You can imagine things are just a wee bit different there...

Cheers

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I'm sure there are online homebrew shops somewhere in Europe that can ship him some yeast.

pm5k00 said:

I'm sure there are online homebrew shops somewhere in Europe that can ship him some yeast.

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There are, but to ship it to Israel in a time-frame that can give the yeast a chance to survive is ridiculously expensive ( To the tune of 40-50 US$ for a couple of vials, plus around 12-15$ for the actual yeast) Not really worth it.

The mash temp idea sounds like a good suggestion. I'll have to try that. Thanks :rockin:

Read up on how to keep a frozen yeast bank. Then ordering an english, american, and belgian vial will have you in yeast for as long as you want to keep your yeast bank alive.

Or, get some gear together and go wild. Look at how to capture wild yeast in the Lambic/Wild forum.

El_Exorcisto, Am already doing that problem is that my "English" strain is fairly malty, whereas some of the beers I'm looking at ask for "Dry English" - Hence the question

Ah, Dry English ale yeast is a bit more attenuative so adding a bit of corn sugar to your recipe will kind of simulate that, but I would use liquid instead of a dry strain. Boil your sugar and let cool before adding it to your fermenter. Adding it to the kettle can lead to poor attenuation since the yeast gets used to digesting the easy sugars instead of the maltose/maltotriose.