Dry yeast Vs Liquid

You don't really need to stir the yeast in. In fact, it's better if you just sprinkle the yeast on top of the water and let them take on the moisture at their own pace. There's no reason to proof the yeast either.. unless it was super heated in the package, it's going to be fine.

elkdog said:

Yeah, that WB-06 seems to confirm the going wisdom that dry yeasts are great for clean American or English styles, but that Belgians, Hefes, and other specialty brews do better with the liquids. All of my favorite beers fall into that American/English vein, so the dry yeast works terrifically for me, but then I don't brew many hefes.

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Sorry for the noob question but can you guys expand on the "other specialty brews"? I'm also not sure what you mean by "clean" styles. Are stouts considered clean?
I've only done 5 batches and used all liquid yeast (I guess I heard the old myth that liquid is superior too). I'd like to cut my costs but don't want to sacrifice on taste.
Thanks in advance.

"clean" means that they do not add a lot of their own flavor from the yeast. it leaves most of that up to the malt and hops.

stouts do not generally need a liquid yeast. nottingham will make a fantastic dry stout. us-05 will work great for stouts, too.

I have recently noticed that dry yeast is going up in price. A few months ago I was paying $1.60 and recently it is over $2.50. While this is much cheaper than liquid it is a drastic increase. I can make 10 slants and batch from a vial or bag of yeast. This significantly lowers the price per beer when buying 50# sacks of grain. I like to give beer away, thus as cheap as possible.
The frugal brewer

Labrat said:

I have recently noticed that dry yeast is going up in price. A few months ago I was paying $1.60 and recently it is over $2.50. While this is much cheaper than liquid it is a drastic increase. I can make 10 slants and batch from a vial or bag of yeast. This significantly lowers the price per beer when buying 50# sacks of grain. I like to give beer away, thus as cheap as possible.
The frugal brewer

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Williams Brewing has Nottingham and Safale -05. When you buy a dozen, the knock 25 cents off a pack. That brings Nottingham down to $1.20/pack and Safale-05 down to $1.60 per pack.

Labrat said:

I have recently noticed that dry yeast is going up in price. A few months ago I was paying $1.60 and recently it is over $2.50. While this is much cheaper than liquid it is a drastic increase. I can make 10 slants and batch from a vial or bag of yeast. This significantly lowers the price per beer when buying 50# sacks of grain. I like to give beer away, thus as cheap as possible.
The frugal brewer

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Speaking speculatively, my guess is that it's because transporting things has gotten a lot more expensive lately. I'm curious though (sincerely curious, not rhetorically curious), do the materials involved in making slants push the cost/benefit of liquid in any way?

The slants require very little dry malt extract and some plain gelatin packets. The corresponding starters require much more malt extract. I love the US-05 it is extremely convenient and fast. The 1056/WLP001 yeast were my default yeast anyway. I only recently became aware of the Safale US-05 since I restarted brewing (December). The nice thing about slants is you can start a library of some of the more exotic strains. I can store these cold for many months. I will probaby order a case of US-05 and or the Nottingham and keep the slants for the "special brews."

zoebisch01 said:

This is why we introduced our new lager yeast ( Diamond Lager Yeast ) last year.

source

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Are any HBSs carrying Diamond?

AHS repackages W-34/70, for example.

postman said:

I see there a many fans of Nottingham out there. Has anyone done a side by side comparison with US Safale-05?

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I have this experiment going right now. I did 20 gal of BM Centenial Blonde this weekend, and I have 10 gal with Nottingham, and 10 with Safale-05. I'm looking forward to seeing how this turns out. But to be honest, I'm not really sure if there will be an discernable difference. I'll let you know though.

postman said:

I'm fermenting a SNPA Clone as I write this. Because I forgot to order DME for a starter, I decided to experiment. I split the batch into 2 carboys, then added different but similar yeasts. One with US Safale-05 and the other Wyeast 1056. Based on my techniques and anal sanitation this has potential to be my best brew yet. I'm definitely excited to taste the difference. Who else has tried this sort of side by side experiment with dry vs liquid and what were your results?

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I brewed a Pale Ale with Wyeast Ringwood Ale and then I brewed the exact same recipe with Safale US-05. The Safale is still in the secondary but the Ringwood version is awesome.

Can you use dry yeast for commercial?

Brewgeeky said:

Can you use dry yeast for commercial?

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Several breweries do, that's why companies like Fermentis have "industrial divisions."

Beer Industrial Brewing Why use Fermentis Yeast

Dry yeast works very well commercially for smaller breweries that do not have the ability to repitch immediately and want to run different strains of yeast through their brewhouse. I talked to a couple brewpubs that used them for those reasons. One of them did occasionally propagate up some liquid yeast but he said for most of their mainstays it was nice to just drop in a brick of dry when they needed to brew it.

I currently use S-04, S-05, S-33, T-58 and S-23 for my own brews. I have had consistent performance from all of them. I love dry yeast since the viability due to age has never been an issue. I will agree that liquid can still have some advantages as far as variety and certain flavor profiles.

I only use dry yeast because I buy all my brew ingredients on the internet, plus my town in southern California gets very hot in the summer (often over 100 degrees for weeks), so no liquid yeast would survive. I have found Coopers yeast works great and tastes fine when fermented under 70 or so. I also like Safale 05.

For a Hefe, I have had good luck with the Danstar Munich Nice flavor profile fermented mid 60's. More banana than clove, but that's my preference any how. As others have stated, I to have not found WB-06 to produce the proper "hefe" flavor. T-58 makes for nice belgian beers, I've even made a Wit with it and racked a golden strong ale onto the cake with good results. Late syrup additions to the primary really dried it out. Most everythnig else I make gets S-04, or S-05. I've yet to go back to nottingham since my run in with 3 bad packs. Sure they were all the same isolated lot number, but you know it is just a confidence thing . I'll eventually get over it, probably when I ever get around to mail customer service my bad packages and they do the right thing and mail me some new ones back.

So I tried using a liquid yeast (Wyeast American Pale ale) and this was my first time trying it. It turns out that the nutrient packet hadn't broken so it was just the yeast that came out. So I burst the nutrient packet and put them and the yeasties in the wort thinking that the yeast will be fine and wake up and start fermenting. It's only been a few hours but not a bubble has risen to the surface of the brew so far. I can see why dry yeast are way easier not to mention cheaper.

If there isn't any fermentation after a day I was thinking of adding some dry yeast too. I have a packet of safale ale yeast lying around in the fridge. Any thoughts.

pauswa said:

I only use dry yeast because I buy all my brew ingredients on the internet, plus my town in southern California gets very hot in the summer (often over 100 degrees for weeks), so no liquid yeast would survive. I have found Coopers yeast works great and tastes fine when fermented under 70 or so. I also like Safale 05.

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From Lake Elsinore, I'm surprised you don't make the jump up to Riverside to B3 for ingredients... It's not exactly "around the corner", but I would think that given the good prices and great selection, you'd be well taken care of...

Or jump over the Ortega to O'Shea -- not a great selection [and worse prices], but plenty of strains of liquid to choose from...

Granted, I'm a dry yeast guy, but I'm just surprised that you don't make the occasional trek to some of these places...

I have used mainly dry yeast as I haven't tried doing starters yet. I really like 05. Has a good pace to it. I'll use it for anything needing a cleanish yeast. 04 used once and it flocculated way before I hit FG and I am still dealing with that batch. Not too happy. Notti I also tried once and it was fast and furious as well but at least it finished. Gonna try a starter for the next batch. I need the clove for a dunkelweizen.

I experienced the same with my first batch using liquid yeast (White Labs WLP810 San Francisco Lager) - very little fermenting activity, no bubbling for about 10 hours and then continued slowly for three days. From what I am deriving, this should not concern me, right? My previous batches have all involved dry yeast (Safale 4 & 5 or Nottingham) and the bubbling was much more active, starting after about 8 hours. My current beer on tap was fermented by reusing a yeast cake of Safale 4 and 5. Wow, talk about active! The fermentation was visible (bubbles) within 3 hours and resulted in blowover. The beer (Quad-Hopped IPA affectionately labelled Sonoma 41) has a pretty good kick. I didn't take any OG reads, but I can feel it after two glasses. Will the liquid yeast brew a lower alcohol percentage?

Just finished - California Red-Legged IPA (Racer 5 Clone)
Tap - Sonoma 41 (Quad-hopped IPA)
First Fermenter - Postcards from Gualala (Anchor Steam Clone)

Ballroomblitz1 said:

k. I didn't take any OG reads, but I can feel it after two glasses.

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That beats the hell out of any "steenking" hydrometer readings.

Ballroomblitz1 said:

I experienced the same with my first batch using liquid yeast (White Labs WLP810 San Francisco Lager) - very little fermenting activity, no bubbling for about 10 hours and then continued slowly for three days. From what I am deriving, this should not concern me, right? My previous batches have all involved dry yeast (Safale 4 & 5 or Nottingham) and the bubbling was much more active, starting after about 8 hours. My current beer on tap was fermented by reusing a yeast cake of Safale 4 and 5. Wow, talk about active! The fermentation was visible (bubbles) within 3 hours and resulted in blowover. The beer (Quad-Hopped IPA affectionately labelled Sonoma 41) has a pretty good kick. I didn't take any OG reads, but I can feel it after two glasses. Will the liquid yeast brew a lower alcohol percentage?

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You're comparing apples to oranges – the pitching rate of those two batches was MASSIVELY different. Furthermore, if you simply pitched a vial of WLP 810, depending on the manufacture date, you're looking at ~60 Billion cell pitching rate whereas, by pitching onto the cake of two previous batches, you fermented (possibly) with well north of 1 Trillion cells.

The reason that dry yeast seemingly takes off faster than liquid yeast is that manufacturers have developed a method that gives the yeast all of the necessary sterols that the yeast need to begin replication immediately, that is, there is no need to utilize oxygen to create Acetyl CoA from fatty acids in wort.

It used to be that the bacteria levels of dry-yeast combined with the overall ability of the yeast to replicate while avoiding the effects of alcohol toxicity made dry yeast a non-viable (no pun intended) alternative to liquid yeast. In recent years, however, better manufacturing practice has made dry yeast a sound alternative. The pitching rate of a beer likely has more effect on the flavor of the beer than using liquid or dry yeast to achieve that pitching rate. That being said the fact that dry yeast DOES NOT need to utilize wort acid to create sterols (on the first pitch anyway) leads to an increase in esters over liquid yeasts or vs a subsequent pitch of dry yeast.