What is your all-purpose yeast?

Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum

Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

Brew2Be

Well-Known Member
Joined
May 4, 2011
Messages
192
Reaction score
15
Location
Somewhere
Hi. I mostly use champagne yeast as my all-purpose yeast because i think it works great for most things (wine, mead and so on). Is there a better all-purpose yeast? And what do you use?
 
Well, I don't do wine or mead, so that narrows my needs considerably. I always keep a couple of packs of both Safeale S04 and US-05 in the beer fridge, they're both at the top of my "most frequently used" list...

Cheers!
 
I often use S04 for beer (and ferment under 64 degrees to hold down the esters) if I"m using dry yeast. For wines, many of them are made with EC1118 (Champagne yeast).
 
I love PacMan smack packs. I make a yeast starter a couple of days before brewday... Its a yeast that hasn't let me down yet... Makes a killer IPA too...
 
Why would anyone want an all purpose yeast? Every beer has it's own best yeast.

WITH THAT SAID.

Pacman souls be me default yeast. I always wash it so 1 smakpac a year is all I need. I have too much actually. Can't use 36 pacmans a year.
 
04 and 05 are my failsafes that I always keep in the fridge. Pacman is nice in the winter when the temps are low for me. With that being said, I don't think there is an all purpose yeast.
 
PacMan.

But it is useless for Belgians, Bretts, and British beers, so I keep several yeasts going at once.
 
1728 is a great all purpose strain. It handles low and high gravity with ease, attenuates consistently well (though it really helps to finish fermentation at a higher temp than pitch temps), flocculates well, is clean at the lower end of its range and shows tasty dark stone fruit flavors at the high end. It also doesn't seem to mute hop flavors or bitterness. If you know how to treat it well, this yeast can do almost anything one could reasonably expect a single yeast to do.

That's for beer. I don't know how it would do with wine and mead, but the gravity and alcohol tolerances are very good for an ale yeast. I can't say how it does in high acid environments. It might be worth looking into.
 
Brew2Be - Only beer. I used to make wine, but the two year wait didn't provide a very good gratification factor. I like the 4 to 6 weeks that comes with brewing!
 
I have some washed Wyeast 1272 that has served me well for a while.
 
I like us-05 and WLP 007 for almost everything but belgians and hefe/wits.
 
i can only cool my ferm chamber to 40 so i think i'm going to recruit 007 as a house yeast, high floc and good attenuation.
 
My go-to yeast of choice over the entire last year and half has been East Coast Yeast ECY10 aka Old Newark Ale. It ferments fast, clean, dry and it's highly flocculant.
 
Wow a lot of pacman users. My goto is 1056, 001, or US-05 if my brew is spontaneous and there isn't time for a starter. What would you pacman users say the difference is between 1056 and pacman? more flocculent??? Also, how is it different from the San Diego Super Yeast? Same thing?
 
Wlp029 the house yeast for me. Awesome yeast and very versatile. Always produces a crisp clean brite beer.
 
S-05 and S-04. My LHBS is super lazy about re-ordering Wyeast/White labs stuff so I've been doing the dry thing for a bit. So far I have no complaints.
 
US-05 for ales and from the looks and taste of it-2112 Claifornia Lager from now on.
 

Latest posts

Back
Top