Giving dry yeast a 2nd chance

So a few years ago I made my first homebrew, an English Brown kit from Brewer's Best. It came with dry yeast (Nottingham according to my brewlog, but that meant nothing to me then). Fermented out nicely with no big problems.

From there (and through my next nine batches), I only used liquid yeast. For some (weizen, kolsch, wit, etc) it was necessary, but in others I just used it since I thought it'd be higher quality. Not sure why I got that perception, really. Assumption that kit ingredients had to be lower quality? Cost? The look of the little yeasties sitting happily in their White Labs tubes? I don't know...

Recently, I've found out that I wasn't using it correctly--I was underpitching since I never made starters! Still, tasted like beer, and it was pretty damn good regardless!

So for my last two batches, after reading discussions and recipes on HBT I decided to give Safale a shot (S-04 and US-05). Gotta say, I'm impressed! Attenuated well (which I've had issues with in the past), and flocculated out to a nice, firm cake at the bottom of my primary.

For non-specialty beers, I think there's more dry yeast in my future... I love the simplicity, and I've had great results so far. Guess I'm a convert!

+1 to S-04, S-05 and Nottingham dry yeasts. All great.

My story is similar to yours, except I started brewing in June and am coming up on my 4th brew. I too assumed (not sure why) that liquid must be better so I've used White Labs for my last two batches (first kit came with dry). However, for my upcoming IPA I've decided to use US-05. My second brew was a Scottish ale, so the Edinburgh yeast worked well, but in the future I'll probably use more dry than liquid in my standard brews.

I've gone to using dry yeast whenever i can. No starter required and very attenuative.