Dry yeast or not Dry yeast that is the question!

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RedOctober

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I see that dry yeast is usually cheaper and has a longer shelf life than its tubed fresh cousin.

I assume that the tubed stuff must be alot better.

Does anyone have an opinion either way?
 
It depends on what style you want to make. If it doesn't need a specialty yeast for a certain flavor go with the dry.
 
There's noting wrong with dry yeast. I think of them as an all-purpose yeast that do well in most Ales. Liquid yeasts are only better because there are a lot more liquid varieties so you can fine tune your beers or more accurately nail a certain style.. For clean tasting Ales dry yeast is as good as any liquid.
 
From what I have read you can only make starters from liquid yeast. Dry yeast you just have to rehydrate and pitch. It seems that starters will get your fermentation going quicker than just pitching directly.
 
From what I have read you can only make starters from liquid yeast. Dry yeast you just have to rehydrate and pitch. It seems that starters will get your fermentation going quicker than just pitching directly.

Why can't you make starters from dry yeast? It is the same thing that is in liquid yeast once it is rehydrated or am I missing something?
 
I primarily use dry yeast. Safale US-05, S-04 and Danstar Nottingham are all good dry varieties. I you want to make an ale that one of these yeasts work for then the dry yeast is a good option. Once you move outside a basic English (S-04 or Nottingham) or American (US-05) then you will usually get considerably better result from the many liquid varieties available. Due to the wide variety of liquid yeast you have much more choice in the character you want from the yeast. Even within American or English ales there are different characteristics you can find based on the different yeast.

An 11g dry yeast packet has many more yeast cells than a liquid pack. Due to the large number of yeast cells making a 1 liter starter with a dry packet is detrimental and a 2 liter provides no real benefit. There is just not enough food for the numbers. In addition it is cheap and easy to add a second packet if 1 is not enough.

For liquid tubes or packs starters are advisable. They provide a chance to increase the yeast population and get them active. Both Whitelabs vials and Wyeast Activator packs provide about the same number of yeast cells and both benefit from starters. The Smack Pack is not a starter and does not replace one.

So for basic ales dry yeast are an easy and cost effective way to brew. When you want to brew more exotic styles or want to fine tune your brewing liquid yeasts provide many more choices.

Craig
 
From what I have read you can only make starters from liquid yeast. Dry yeast you just have to rehydrate and pitch. It seems that starters will get your fermentation going quicker than just pitching directly.

Its not that you can't make a starter with dry (you do it just the same way), but that packets of dry yeast have a greater starting cell count so you generally don't need to. In a rare occasion that you would want to make a bigger bear with dry yeast, it is cheap enough to just buy a second packet and pitch both.
 
There are a lot of strong opinions each way. It's really a matter of opinion.

My opinion is that with the most commonly used varieties, mainly for British and American ales, dry yeast provides a great flavor profile and offers the price advantage. It's also a bit easier to store, which is a good thing since they're used most often.

When you get into the specialty yeasts, the variety afforded by liquid yeasts win. The opinions I've read about the "specialty" varieties of dry yeast leaves much to be desired.

I used to use liquid yeast exclusively but I've been finding that I'm actually liking the simplicity of dry yeast much more than the variety of the liquid.

You can make good beer with either, so depending on your other needs (cost, space, ease, et cetera) your mileage may very. Try out both, you certainly won't be "wasting" a batch by pitching one or the other!
 
I've done three lagers, two with dry yeast and one with a starter of White Labs. In all cases I followed Jamil's pitching calculator recommendations (as I do with every brew), oxygenated with an O2 rig, and fermented religiously in the middle of the yeast's optimal temp range. I'll never use dry lager yeast again. It's crap. The beer barely passes for beer. Only reason I didn't dump them was because I'm waiting to see if they get drinkable with age. OTOH, my White Labs fermented Helles is so good I wish local competition season wasn't over so I could score a medal or two. :)

Flip to the ale side.. I rarely use anything BUT dry yeast. For Belgians I use Wyeast or White Labs and do starters. Safale US-05 and S-04 are the most common yeasts I use. I plan to try K-97 (a Kolsch yeast) soon for a lager-like ale fermented at cool temps. I haven't tried Notty yet since it has been unavailable for so long, but I will use it going forward for my hoppy beers (pale ales, IPAs) now that it's back on the shelves since many swear by it for dry, hoppy beers.
 
Its not that you can't make a starter with dry (you do it just the same way), but that packets of dry yeast have a greater starting cell count so you generally don't need to. In a rare occasion that you would want to make a bigger bear with dry yeast, it is cheap enough to just buy a second packet and pitch both.

Dry yeast are dried right after they have built up their energy reserves. Depending on the age of your liquid yeast the yeast have used up some, or even most, of their reserves and need to be replenished with oxygen and fresh thin wort before they are ready do ferment 5 gallons.

For the 9-9-9 at 1.119, I pitched 2.5 packages of Safale which is equivalent to 5 very fresh vials of White Labs. (The other .5 pkgs went into my partigyle ale)
 
Is there a link to somewhere that describes the flavor profiles for dry and liquid yeasts?
 
dry is for those too cheap to buy liquid. with a liquid, you can make the same recipe two or three times and pitch different yeast each time and have three different end results. btw... if you do decide to do dry... DON'T REHYDRATE! just pour it into your fermenter. it knows what to do. I work at a brew supply shop and way too many people end up killing their yeast when they rehydrate it.
 
dry is for those too cheap to buy liquid. with a liquid, you can make the same recipe two or three times and pitch different yeast each time and have three different end results. btw... if you do decide to do dry... DON'T REHYDRATE! just pour it into your fermenter. it knows what to do. I work at a brew supply shop and way too many people end up killing their yeast when they rehydrate it.

Well, as charming as you put it.................I respectfully don't agree.

The difference in dry yeast strains and liquid yeast strains has to do with availability, not quality. Also, rehydration is an important part of taking care of the yeast correctly. Sure, you can just sprinkle it on, but you have much more viable yeast if you properly rehydrate.

I don't work at a brew shop, though, so you probably know much more about pitching rates, brewing science, yeast strains, etc than I do. I'm just a lowly brewer.

Incidently, when I was speaking to Chris White last year, he didn't really have anything negative to say about using dry yeast or that liquid yeast was intrinsically superior. He does like his products, though, and stands by them.
 
Wrong. Some of us choose dry or liquid based on the beer we're brewing.


dry is for those too cheap to buy liquid. with a liquid, you can make the same recipe two or three times and pitch different yeast each time and have three different end results. btw... if you do decide to do dry... DON'T REHYDRATE! just pour it into your fermenter. it knows what to do. I work at a brew supply shop and way too many people end up killing their yeast when they rehydrate it.
 
What happens when you over pitch? I am preparing to brew a heavier IPA and was thinking of adding maybe an extra 1/4 pack (US-05) when I pitch just for good measure. Any risk there?
 
dry is for those too cheap to buy liquid. with a liquid, you can make the same recipe two or three times and pitch different yeast each time and have three different end results. btw... if you do decide to do dry... DON'T REHYDRATE! just pour it into your fermenter. it knows what to do. I work at a brew supply shop and way too many people end up killing their yeast when they rehydrate it.

Wow, are you like a broken record of jerkiness or what?...great first impression you are making here....Are all your four posts this exact same one, or just 50% of them?

Or are you just trolling???

:rolleyes:

Many commerial breweries use dry yeast, hence, like fermentis labs, they have industrial divisions.

And also these days most dry yeast is not mis handled, and is fresh, most stops and mail order that I know of are high turnover places, and their yeast doesn't sit on shelf in heated warehouses for months before being shipped out.

This sounds like some of the anti-dry yeast propaganda that evolved from the bad old daysbefore 1978 and legal homebrewing, when the only yeast that was available came from europe in dry cakes that may have sat in the hot cargo hold of a ship for months, then sat under the lid of a can a blue ribbon malt extract for god knows how long.

Danstars website even says this...

The use of active dried professional yeasts for amateur brewing is a relatively new phenomenon introduced by Lallemand. Now, choose your active dried yeast for brewing with confidence. Ask for Danstar superior quality yeasts at your local retailer.

So most of those notions you have really are just biased carryovers from the bad old days.

Nowadays in most homebrew shops, just as much care is put in storing their dry yeasts and they do the liquid and the hops, in cold stoage.

So these days those ideas you may have are definitley not the truth.....Fermentis labs is not some podunk company making half asses yeast with "inconsistant pitching rates," and neither are the makers of the other dry yeast...In this day of consumer choice people wouldn't settle for crappy yeast, and those makers of dry yeast wouldn't still be in business if their products weren't any good.

I use dry yeast for 99% of my beers, for basic ales I use safale 05, for more british styles I us safale 04 and for basic lagers I use saflager..

The only time I use liquid yeast is if I am making a beer where the yeast drives the style, where certain flavor characteristics are derived from the yeast, such as phenols. Like Belgian beers, where you get spicy/peppery flavors from the yeast and higher temp fermentation. Or let's say a wheat beer (needing a lowly flocculant yest) or a Kholsch, where the style of the beer uses a specific yeast strain that is un available in dry form.

I have found that a lot of new brewers especially, THINK they HAVE to use liquid yeast, but in reality most ales can be made with Notty, Windsor, Us-05, Us-04 and many lagers with basic Saflager.....7-8 bucks a pop for liquid as opposed to $1.50-2.50 for dry, with more cell count, is imho just a waste of money for the majority of a brewer's recipe bank...most commercial ales us a limited range of strains, and those liquid strains are really the same strains that the afore mentioned dry strains cover, for example Us-05 is the famed "Chico strain", so if you are paying 7-8 bucks for Wyeast 1056 American/Chico Ale Yeast, and you STILL have to make a starter to have enough viable cells, then you are ripping yourself off, in terms of time and money....

But if you are looking for a "clean" yeast profile, meaning about 90% of american ales, the 05, or nottingham is the way to go. Need "Bready" or yeasty for English ales, then 04 or windsor. Want a clean, low profile lager yeast- saflager usually does the trick.

That's one thing about dry...you don't need to reproduce anymore yeasts than are already in the packets of dry.

in fact any of the dry yeast haters should go back and read just what Palmer says about dry yeast.

6.3 Yeast Forms

Yeast come in two main product forms, dry and liquid. (There is also another form, available as pure cultures on petri dishes or slants, but it is generally used as one would use liquid yeast.) Dry yeast are select, hardy strains that have been dehydrated for storability. There are a lot of yeast cells in a typical 7 gram packet. For best results, it needs to be re-hydrated before it is pitched. For the first-time brewer, a dry ale yeast is highly recommended.

Dry yeast is convenient for the beginning brewer because the packets provide a lot of viable yeast cells, they can be stored for extended periods of time and they can be prepared quickly on brewing day. It is common to use one or two packets (7 - 14 grams) of dried yeast for a typical five gallon batch. This amount of yeast, when properly re-hydrated, provides enough active yeast cells to ensure a strong fermentation. Dry yeast can be stored for extended periods (preferably in the refrigerator) but the packets do degrade with time. This is one of the pitfalls with brewing from the no-name yeast packets taped to the top of a can of malt extract. They are probably more than a year old and may not be very viable. It is better to buy another packet or three of a reputable brewer's yeast that has been kept in the refrigerator at the brewshop. Some leading and reliable brands of dry yeast are DCL Yeast, Yeast Labs (marketed by G.W. Kent, produced by Lallemand of Canada), Cooper's, DanStar (produced by Lallemand), Munton & Fison and Edme.

Dry yeasts are good but the rigor of the dehydration process limits the number of different ale strains that are available and in the case of dry lager yeast, eliminates them almost entirely. A few dry lager yeasts do exist, but popular opinion is that they behave more like ale yeasts than lager. DCL Yeast markets two strains of dry lager yeast, Saflager S-189 and S-23, though only S-23 is currently available in a homebrewing size. The recommended fermentation temperature is 48-59°F. I would advise you to use two packets per 5 gallon batch to be assured of a good pitching rate.

The only thing missing with dry yeast is real individuality, which is where liquid yeasts come in. Many more different strains of yeast are available in liquid form than in dry.

The only real "criticism" of dry yeast, is that, due to how they are made to be stable, that there are not many varieties available, that and the warning to avoid those "no-name" yeasts under the lids of extract can and to go with one of the "proven" strains.

No yeast bashing by him at all......So if HE doesn't bash dry yeast.....

Also you must not be very good at your job if you believe that crap about not rehydrating dry yeast....just about every yeast producer of dry yeast recommends some form of rehydration...the only way someone would kill their yeast that way would be if they dumped it into boiling water....

Oy veh :rolleyes: I didn't think they allowed 15 year olds to work in homebrew shops.
 
dry is for those too cheap to buy liquid. with a liquid, you can make the same recipe two or three times and pitch different yeast each time and have three different end results. btw... if you do decide to do dry... DON'T REHYDRATE! just pour it into your fermenter. it knows what to do. I work at a brew supply shop and way too many people end up killing their yeast when they rehydrate it.

87665Dude-Wtf-Posters.jpg
 
DON'T REHYDRATE! just pour it into your fermenter. it knows what to do. I work at a brew supply shop and way too many people end up killing their yeast when they rehydrate it.

That is wrong on so many levels. While you may not necessarily need to rehydrate, you will get many many times more viable yeast cells if you do.

That said, one of course needs to rehydrate properly as per directions.
 
What happens when you over pitch? I am preparing to brew a heavier IPA and was thinking of adding maybe an extra 1/4 pack (US-05) when I pitch just for good measure. Any risk there?

Well, I'd think that you weren't overpitching necessarily. I like mrmalty.com's pitching calculator: Mr Malty Pitching Rate Calculator

That will tell you the optimum amount of yeast, dry or liquid.

Keep in mind though that if you use an extra 1/4 pack, then you're not going to be able to use the rest of the 3/4 package later. Dry yeast will not keep well once it's been exposed to oxygen (air). I think that it will only be useful for another week or so at best, but I forget the actual time/length/science behind it.
 
Well, I'd think that you weren't overpitching necessarily. I like mrmalty.com's pitching calculator: Mr Malty Pitching Rate Calculator

That will tell you the optimum amount of yeast, dry or liquid.

Keep in mind though that if you use an extra 1/4 pack, then you're not going to be able to use the rest of the 3/4 package later. Dry yeast will not keep well once it's been exposed to oxygen (air). I think that it will only be useful for another week or so at best, but I forget the actual time/length/science behind it.

Why is it you always have the correct answer, but can never remember why its right? It's OK for you to be smart, it won't make you any less hot :)
 
Why is it you always have the correct answer, but can never remember why its right? It's OK for you to be smart, it won't make you any less hot :)

Smart + Bad recall = Me, yooper and half the other regulars. lol

Yeah, it's the CRS syndrome I develop after I turned forty. If I hear an explantion, and it makes sense, I remember the right answer but forget how to get there. I also forget where I left my car keys, what day of the week it is, and who shot JR. I generally remember most facts when it comes to brewing, though- if not the actual science behind it!
 
FWIW, I used K-97 with my last batch of Kolsch, and it came out spectacular. I've used WLP029 several times in the past, and I prefer the beer made with K-97.

I have found the same thing, my Kolsch is great with K-97! I would highly recommend.
 
Well, I'd think that you weren't overpitching necessarily. I like mrmalty.com's pitching calculator: Mr Malty Pitching Rate Calculator

That will tell you the optimum amount of yeast, dry or liquid.

Keep in mind though that if you use an extra 1/4 pack, then you're not going to be able to use the rest of the 3/4 package later. Dry yeast will not keep well once it's been exposed to oxygen (air). I think that it will only be useful for another week or so at best, but I forget the actual time/length/science behind it.

Thanks for the tip! It looks like adding a bit more isn't a bad Idea and the pack I will be parting out is getting towards it's "end" date.

Just curious, what is the result of over pitching, off flavors?
 
Thanks for the tip! It looks like adding a bit more isn't a bad Idea and the pack I will be parting out is getting towards it's "end" date.

Just curious, what is the result of over pitching, off flavors?

It's actually hard for homebrewers to overpitch, but it's possible in some unusual cases. Most homebrewers underpitch, as I'm sure you know.

If you do overpitch, the yeast don't go through their "growth" phase, so there are some flavor issues, but it's more an issue of attenuation. I found this very good explanation here from NQ3X: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/837484-post4.html
 
That is wrong on so many levels. While you may not necessarily need to rehydrate, you will get many many times more viable yeast cells if you do.

That said, one of course needs to rehydrate properly as per directions.

It says on Fermentis packs not to rehydrate. "Pitching: Sprinkle into wort" The people that rehydrate them think they are doing something good... but they're just wasting their time.
 
It says on Fermentis packs not to rehydrate. "Pitching: Sprinkle into wort" The people that rehydrate them think they are doing something good... but they're just wasting their time.

That's complete BS. Do some research.

Just because you work at a HBS doesn't mean you know wtf you are talking about.

From Danstar's website (Nottingham etc):

Why is rehydrating the dry yeast before pitching important?

Dry beer yeast needs to be reconstituted in a gentle way. During rehydration the cell membrane undergoes changes which can be lethal to yeast. In order to reconstitute the yeast as gently as possible (and minimize/avoid any damage) yeast producers developed specific rehydration procedures. Although most dry beer yeast will work if pitched directly into wort, it is recommended to follow the rehydration instructions to insure the optimum performance of the yeast.

From Fermentis (Safale etc):

Re-hydrate the dry yeast into yeast cream in a stirred vessel prior to pitching. Sprinkle the dry yeast in 10 times its own weight of sterile water or wort at 27C ± 3C. Once the expected weight of dry yeast is reconstituted into cream by this method (this takes about 15 to 30 minutes), maintain a gentle stirring for another 30 minutes. Then pitch the resultant cream into the fermentation vessel.

Alternatively, pitch dry yeast directly in the fermentation vessel providing the temperature of the wort is above 20C. Progressively sprinkle the dry yeast into the wort ensuring the yeast covers all the surface of wort available in order to avoid clumps. Leave for 30 minutes and then mix the wort e.g. using aeration.

Pitching dry yeast directly onto wort results in more osmotic shock than rehydrating the yeast in water, resulting in less yeast surviving yeast cells. While there is usually enough cells in a packet of yeast to overcome the loss, you will have more yeast cells per pitch by rehydrating the yeast in water (note: never rehydrate in distilled water).
 
So, we've covered the potential (yet highly unlikely) issues of over pitching. I still have two questions though:

1. What is considered "overpitching?" MrMalty says 1.2 packs of dry for the IPA I'm doing soon. Would 2 packs be vastly overpitching?

2. What are the issues of underpitching? Slow fermentation onset leading to a longer period of time bacteria have to attack?
 
It says on Fermentis packs not to rehydrate. "Pitching: Sprinkle into wort" The people that rehydrate them think they are doing something good... but they're just wasting their time.

http://www.fermentis.com/FO/pdf/HB/EN/Safale_S-04_HB.pdf

Pitching instructions:
Re-hydrate the dry yeast into yeast cream in a stirred vessel prior to pitching. Sprinkle the dry yeast in 10 times its own weight of sterile water or wort at 27C ± 3C. Once the expected weight of dry yeast is reconstituted into cream by this method (this takes about 15 to 30 minutes), maintain a gentle stirring for another 30 minutes. Then pitch the resultant cream into the fermentation vessel.
 
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