IPA Yeast Experiment

A few months ago some friends and I teamed up to brew 15 gallons of IPA. Here's the recipe:

35 lbs. pale ale malt (80%)
4 lbs. carapils (10%)
4 lbs. caramalt (10%)

1 oz. Summit 17.6% 90 min
1 oz. Columbus 15.4% 60 min
1 oz. Summit 60 min
1 oz. Columbus 30 min
1 oz. Summit 30 min
3 oz. Columbus 15 min
3 oz. Cascade 5% 15 min, 10 min, 5 min, flameout
1.5 oz. Columbus 10 min, 5 min, flameout

We split the beer into 3 5-gallon batches and used a different yeast in each: one with Danstar Nottingham, one with Safale US-05, and one with White Labs California Ale. No starters or rehydration.

Bottled after four weeks in primary. We did a blind tasting three weeks later, and I was surprised at how differently the beers turned out. Here's a comparison:

Color: The Danstar and Safale beers turned out similar in color - both were golden yellow and somewhat cloudy. The White Labs beer was both darker - more of a golden orange - and more clear. White Labs wins on this dimension.

Aroma: Safale beer had almost no aroma at all. Nottingham had a faint citrus aroma. White Labs had a huge vanilla/caramel aroma. White Labs wins again.

Flavor/Mouthfeel: All three beers had an excellent creamy texture. The White Labs beer's flavor was dominated by caramel and vanilla, which pushed the hop bitterness and flavor to the background. The Safale beer, having minimal caramel/vanilla flavors, displayed more hop bitterness and citrusy hop flavor. The Nottingham beer was similar, but better - ample bitterness and loads of hop flavor. I love hops, so at this point in time I thought the Nottingham had the best flavor.

At the conclusion of this tasting session, I considered the Nottingham to be slightly better than the White Labs due to its superior hop flavor. A few weeks later, however, I performed another tasting session and found that the White Labs beer's vanilla/caramel flavors had faded somewhat, allowing the hops to show through and producing a more balanced beer. Now I'd say that the White Labs is slightly better than the Nottingham, but it's close to a toss-up.

Excellent work! I'd love to see more experiments like this.

I typically use US-05 as my "go-to" yeast for IPAs, but I might have to try Notty on my next batch and see how it turns out, as I really like for those hop flavors to come through as much as possible.

Thanks for the data!

Did you normalize the pitch rate for each 5 gallon batch? There are a lot more yeast cells in a dry yeast packet than in one tube of liquid yeast. This could have a profound effect on your results.

g-star said:

Did you normalize the pitch rate for each 5 gallon batch? There are a lot more yeast cells in a dry yeast packet than in one tube of liquid yeast. This could have a profound effect on your results.

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This would have a profound effect. However, I think the purpose of this experiment was closer to "How does yeast as used by most homebrewers compare". I would bet most people just toss it in.

It would be interesting though to compare by making a starter and busting out these microscopes I've seen in other threads to get accurate counts in order to try to pitch the same yeast count to all three.

I'd like to try something like this with WLP007. I recently did a DIPA with this yeast and I was more than impressed. It was the clearest beer I'd ever made and tasted wonderful out of the primary.

g-star said:

Did you normalize the pitch rate for each 5 gallon batch? There are a lot more yeast cells in a dry yeast packet than in one tube of liquid yeast. This could have a profound effect on your results.

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No, I just tossed them all in.

g-star said:

Did you normalize the pitch rate for each 5 gallon batch? There are a lot more yeast cells in a dry yeast packet than in one tube of liquid yeast. This could have a profound effect on your results.

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Not neccesarily true. Dry yeast is mostly dead cells. The number of living yeast cells is dependant on the drying method, though.

I'm surprised the US-05 and WLP001 were that much different considering they're essentially the same strain.

Did you take FG's on all of them? I'd like to know attenuation and that would indicate flavor differences as well.

tre9er said:

I'm surprised the US-05 and WLP001 were that much different considering they're essentially the same strain.

Did you take FG's on all of them? I'd like to know attenuation and that would indicate flavor differences as well.

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D'oh! Forgot to include that in my report. OG was 1.065. FGs:

Safale - 1.007
White Labs - 1.010
Nottingham - 1.013

tre9er said:

I'm surprised the US-05 and WLP001 were that much different considering they're essentially the same strain.

Did you take FG's on all of them? I'd like to know attenuation and that would indicate flavor differences as well.

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I'm not. He pitched near-as-makes-no-difference twice as many cells into the US-05 batch as the WLP001 batch.

daksin said:

I'm not. He pitched near-as-makes-no-difference twice as many cells into the US-05 batch as the WLP001 batch.

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Well, I should have said that it was slightly suspicious to me that the results for those two were much different...

hendenburg2 said:

Not neccesarily true. Dry yeast is mostly dead cells. The number of living yeast cells is dependant on the drying method, though.

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Don't know where you're getting that info, but I think you are misguided. Go to a reputable source like Mr. Malty and check the cell counts on 1 package of liquid/dry yeast with the same manufacturing date. There are far more cells in a 11.5g dry yeast packet vs. a tube/smack pack.

That said, inexperienced home brewers can kill half of those dry yeast cells by not properly rehydrating before pitching. So in reading the OP more carefully (no starters or rehydration), perhaps the pitch rates were closer than I originally thought.

g-star said:

Don't know where you're getting that info, but I think you are misguided. Go to a reputable source like Mr. Malty and check the cell counts on 1 package of liquid/dry yeast with the same manufacturing date. There are far more cells in a 11.5g dry yeast packet vs. a tube/smack pack.

That said, inexperienced home brewers can kill half of those dry yeast cells by not properly rehydrating before pitching. So in reading the OP more carefully (no starters or rehydration), perhaps the pitch rates were closer than I originally thought.

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this is based on the production/drying methods of dry yeast packets. the way that manufacturers keep yeast alive in dry packets is by surrounding them in a cocoon of dead, dehydrated yeast cells. most of the living cells are in a lethargic state, which keeps them from dying from lack of food in a dry packet. since they have their metabolisms slowed down and exist in low-food, low-moisture environments, the live-cell counts are more likely to be lower than when last tested, as opposed to cultures packed in liquid. in addition, if manufacturer methods for testing cell counts are similar to how cell counts are taken in other fields of biology, it's probably easier for dead cells to be included in the counts with dry yeast than with liquid ones

hendenburg2 said:

this is based on the production/drying methods of dry yeast packets. the way that manufacturers keep yeast alive in dry packets is by surrounding them in a cocoon of dead, dehydrated yeast cells. most of the living cells are in a lethargic state, which keeps them from dying from lack of food in a dry packet. since they have their metabolisms slowed down and exist in low-food, low-moisture environments, the live-cell counts are more likely to be lower than when last tested, as opposed to cultures packed in liquid.

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This may all be true, but the larger point is that there are typically about 1/2 the amount of viable cells in a liquid tube/smack pack relative to a typical 11.5g packet of dried yeast, when comparing samples with similar production dates. These figures are irrespective of whatever dead cells may be present in the dry yeast.