Dry yeast?

Hello all,

I'm getting back into homebrewing after an extended (~10 year) hiatus. In my previous brewing experience, I basically would have never considered using a dry yeast - I think the shift I made after about 5 batches of beer from dry to liquid when I began brewing back in the mid-90s was the single biggest improvement in my beers - much bigger than the difference between extract and all-grain. In looking through several forums now however, I see quite a few folks using dry yeast. My question is have dry yeasts really improved that much?

I wasn't brewing 10 years ago , but there are a few very good dry yeasts, at least in my opinion. I like Nottingham and S-05. I use both liquid and dry and have had very good luck with both of these dry yeasts.

I know ten years ago (I was brewing then) the big problem with dry yeast was the process gave more chance for the culture to get infected before packaging, so you had a greater chance of a bad fermentation. I've never used dry yeast, except for the first batch that the dry yeast came with the extract kit. The first change I discovered and started doing was using liquid yeasts. There was much more variety. I'm not sure of their quality today because I haven't even owned a pack of dry yeast since then.

Dry yeast has come a long way my friend! I remember those days too. I mainly use liquid yeast myself, but switch to dry when doing some big beers and lagers for cost reasons should I not feel like making a starter.

The variety is good, around 20 strains or so. Still not up to the variety of liquid, but most of the popular liquid strains are in dry too. Fear not the dry. Quality wise, it is on the same level as liquid these days, with better shelf stability than liquid to boot!

I use exclusively dry yeast and I challenge anyone to tell me my beers are inferior to theirs using liquid. I like fermentis stuff, though I have used nottingham with great result also. I primarily use S04 and S05, but their wheat and belgian yeasts make damn fine brew. I can't find anything wrong with the lager strains either. The w34/70 is a tank and makes a great cal common as well as more traditional lagers, and a pretty good baltic porter too.

Personally I prefer the simplicity of use and storage. I keep a few packs of 4, 5 and 34/70 on hand at all times as I keep stock in ingredients and occasionally have the impromptu brew day. Much easier in my opinion to have a couple house strains when there are less options. If you can control your temp, you can control your yeast and get more characteristic variance from less strains. Cheers

I have absolutely no issues with using dry yeast. I can brew a helluva lot of styles with S-04, US-05, S-23 and W-34/70.

I started brewing 13 years ago and back then I used to use only liquid yeast. Back then there were no good dry yeasts. Today I can use 1 pack of US-o5 and it gets going faster then 2 viles of liquid yeast used to back 13 years ago.
Not all dry yeast is better today, but from my own experience: US-05 (it used to be S-56 back in the days), Nottingham and S-04 are as good if not better then their liquid counterparts nowadays.

US-05 and T-58. I use them both a lot, both cover a lot of territory and I get few complaints. I'll complicate my process only if it gets me better beer. Using a liquid yeast in lieu of one of these doesn't usually fill that bill.

i can get fresh yeast slurry from my local brewery (Drake's) anytime but i use dry yeast 95% of the time. won 2nd place for an APA in the world beer cup last yr with US-05.

Wow - I confess, I'm still something of a Doubting Thomas, but I may have to split out some of my next brew and try one of the drys you folks are recommending!

if you go on some of the pro brewer forums you'll find that lots of commercial breweries use dry yeast and many of them just dump it right in dry, no re-hydration.

I always pay close attention to pitching rates. Last year did a split batch APA with US-05 and Wyeast 1056. Nice beer, totally indistinguishable between strains.

Lots of good dry yeasts and more being released all the time. Us-05 is a standard as is S-04.

Two new ones. BRY-97 is a very good choice. Did an IPA with it recently and was impressed with the results.

Another...Belle Saison... Have not tried it but it is on my short list to try.

i found this bit of info from a yeast guy named Dr. clayton cone

Let me give you some facts regarding rehydration and you can decide for
yourself where you want to compromise.
Every strain of yeast has its own optimum rehydration temperature. All of
them range between 95 F to 105F. Most of them closer to 105F. The dried
yeast cell wall is fragile and it is the first few minutes (possibly
seconds) of rehydration that the warm temperature is critical while it is
reconstituting its cell wall structure.

As you drop the initial temperature of the water from 95 to 85 or 75 or 65F
the yeast leached out more and more of its insides damaging the each cell.
The yeast viability also drops proportionally. At 95 – 105 F, there is
100% recovery of the viable dry yeast. At 60F, there can be as much as 60%
dead cells.

The water should be tap water with the normal amount of hardness present.
The hardness is essential for good recovery. 250 -500 ppm hardness is
ideal. This means that deionized or distilled water should not be used.
Ideally, the warm rehydration water should contain about 0.5 – 1.0% yeast
extract

For the initial few minutes (perhaps seconds) of rehydration, the yeast
cell wall cannot differentiate what passes through the wall. Toxic
materials like sprays, hops, SO2 and sugars in high levels, that the yeast
normally can selectively keep from passing through its cell wall rush right
in and seriously damage the cells. The moment that the cell wall is
properly reconstituted, the yeast can then regulate what goes in and out of
the cell. That is why we hesitate to recommend rehydration in wort or
must. Very dilute wort seems to be OK.

We recommend that the rehydrated yeast be added to the wort within 30
minutes. We have built into each cell a large amount of glycogen and
trehalose that give the yeast a burst of energy to kick off the growth
cycle when it is in the wort. It is quickly used up if the yeast is
rehydrated for more than 30 minutes. There is no damage done here if it is
not immediatly add to the wort. You just do not get the added benefit of
that sudden burst of energy. We also recommend that you attemperate the
rehydrated yeast to with in 15F of the wort before adding to the wort.
Warm yeast into a cold wort will cause many of the yeast to produce petite
mutants that will never grow or ferment properly and will cause them to
produce H2S. The attemperation can take place over a very brief period by
adding, in encrements, a small amount of the cooler wort to the rehydrated
yeast.

Many times we find that warm water is added to a very cold container that
drops the rehydrating water below the desired temperature.

Sometimes refrigerated, very cold, dry yeast is added directly to the warm
water with out giving it time to come to room temperature. The initial
water intering the cell is then cool.

How do many beer and wine makers have successful fermentations when they
ignore all the above? I believe that it is just a numbers game. Each gram
of Active Dry Yeast contains about 20 billion live yeast cells. If you
slightly damage the cells, they have a remarkable ability to recover in the
rich wort. If you kill 60% of the cell you still have 8 billion cells per
gram that can go on to do the job at a slower rate.

The manufacturer of Active Dry Beer Yeast would be remiss if they offered
rehydration instructions that were less than the very best that their data
indicated.

One very important factor that the distributor and beer maker should keep
in mind is that Active Dry Yeast is dormant or inactive and not inert, so
keep refrigerated at all times. Do not store in a tin roofed warehouse
that becomes an oven or on a window sill that gets equally hot.

Active Dry Yeast looses about 20% of its activity in a year when it is
stored at 75 F and only 4% when refrigerated.

The above overview of rehydration should tell you that there is a very best
way to rehydrate. It should also tell you where you are safe in adapting
the rehydration procedure to fit your clients.

Clayton Cone.

I use S-04 and 05 for nearly everything. I used to use liquid but now I brew nearly everything with dry yeast. Can also be washed and re-used just like liquid yeast.

Man, about to rehydrate some S-23 for use in a Pilsner and will, as per the product sheet instructions, rehyrate at 79 degrees max (73 +/- 6 degrees). That's a long way from the 105 recommended by Clayton Cone!

S-23 being a lager yeast requires a cooler temp to activate fermentation. I know that threw me off too.

osagedr said:

Man, about to rehydrate some S-23 for use in a Pilsner and will, as per the product sheet instructions, rehyrate at 79 degrees max (73 +/- 6 degrees). That's a long way from the 105 recommended by Clayton Cone!

Click to expand...

He had to be talking about ale yeast.

I like both Fermentis and Danstar dry yeasts. S-04, S-05, Windsor and Nottingham have all worked great for me.

I'm really itching to try the new Belle Saison yeast from Danstar.

Rick

Good catch on the lager-vs-ale strains, guys. For US-05 the product sheet instructions are rehydrate at 74-86. I probably won't go all the way up to 105, but next time I use a dry ale yeast I'll go right up to high 80s just to see what happens.

I've done the mid-90's with 05 and it's worked fine for me. That doesn't mean that's the ideal temp though. I think I'm gonna go cooler in the future.