Did any of those recipes have detailed instructions on how the yeast was pitched?
Most don't specify if they rehydrate or direct pitch. A few mention adding oxygen or aerating. One made a 4L starter with S-23 while another used 14 packets of 34/70 in a 35 gallon Baltic porter.
Everyone is right! Wasn't anticipating the back and forth here. just wanted to share where I'm at with my brewing preferences, which are primarily minimizing the number of days of needed to dedicate towards brewing a batch, while still producing a clean beer to consume from the kegerator in my garage whilst paired with a grilled bratwurst.
Prost everybody
Well, WLP001 and US-05 are actually not super closely related. Personal preference is definitely a factor there.
It would be interesting to see a this re-brewed using WLP001 liquid, WLP001 dry (nth generation re-pitch), and perhaps WLP001 dry (sprinkled or re-hydrated).
Yes, you need alot of yeast for 15 gallons. You could try brewing a smaller batch first, like a 5 gallon batch? Then you have plenty of yeast for 15 gallons. Even with dry yeast, 1 package is not enough for 15 gallons. So blaming your problem on liquid yeast is not accurate.Just randomly felt like sharing my latest aha brewing moment. For my first several years of brewing I’ve strictly built up yeast starters from single packets of liquid yeast over what has usually been the coarse of a weeks time and 2-3 stages to obtain cell counts high enough for 10-15 gallon ~1.050 OG lagers and 1.060 IPA’s. My frequency of brewing has dropped since having a couple kids, and my first venture with dry yeast was the Verdant strain with a hazy IPA. It turned out awesome and most notably I recall feeling less stressed that week because all I did was re-hydrate during my boil and my brew day was laid back. I recently had a series of German lagers to brew for an event (Helles Bock, Festbier, Munich Dunkel) and decided I’d give the CellarScience German dry yeast a chance. Picked up a 500g block and portioned individual pitches in vacuum sealed bags and waited to pitch them after knockout. First two batches I made mini starters with DME on brew day (2-3 hours before pitching) and noticed the krausen in the 5L flask had dropped by the time I pitched the beer. 3rd time around I just sprinkled the pitch directly onto the wort and holy moly, it took off like a rocket and was bubbling within 6 hours (55F pitch temp). This may have been over dramatized because I elected to also not add fermcap to this latest beer, because I woke up to yeast overblown blowoff tube in the morning, it was awesome.
So with that, I’m over building up starters and plenty happy with the results (performance & taste) I’ve been getting from various dry yeasts.
Prost!
My point is I’d rather buy bulk dry yeast and pitch on brew day by skipping the multi day yeast starter required to build up a single liquid yeast pack to the required amount for my batch size. I don’t have time to brew 5 gallon batches but I get the idea of 5 gallon yeast starters for bigger batches. I’m too lazy to do the math but I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that dry yeast is cheaper by the cell than liquid yeast. So because I can buy bulk blocks of it cheaper than I can buy bulk liquid pitches I think it’s a fair complaint for me.
Don't rehydrate - you'll get better, more consistent results just sprinkling it on your wort.
I tend to think that dry yeast, even the old standbys like US-05 and S-04, have continued to improve in quality. It is definitely worth doing a split batch or two to see how you like each yeast. As Bobby mentioned earlier, it is difficult to figure out a "same" pitch rate between dry yeast and liquid yeast for these types of trails though. Is the driver of the difference in that article the yeasts or the fact that the liquid yeast was spun up in a starter?
I’ve never attempted drying, but have heard of a few strains being successful.
With a "duck duck go" web search of the title, I found a pre-print (link to PDF).
First off, I have read that dry yeast can sometimes impart different flavors on a first pitch vs a repitch. Personally, I have harvested and reused dry yeast a few times, and no drastic differences jumped out at me. It was not a controlled experiment though.
I've only brewed about 10yrs.
Two men's.
Agreed. I notice some dry packs say to pitch two packs and all liquid yeast advises a starter for anything over about 1.050. Even with liquid starter, I have significant lag time. It's difficult to accurately determine pitch rate without a hemocytometer and microscope, though. Maybe I'll buy a cheap one and borrow the kids' scope in the future
Right. Vitality can also be assessed with methylene blue test using microscopy
But that's not a direct comparison of dry with liquid, S-04 is not the same as WLP013.
I wouldn't go that far - they're not identical, but you wouldn't want them marrying. The WLP001 subgroup and 1056/US-05 subgroup are still more closely related to each other than they are to the original BRY-96.
You've obviously not been listening to the right people. The stress of drying inhibits ester production. For a lot of people that's not a problem, for instance if you just want something clean to ferment hoppy beers, and for lagers a lack of esters is a positive bonus. But it is a problem particularly for British and Belgian styles, compounded by the fact that the choice of dry yeasts for British styles is particularly unreflective of the diversity in the real world of British brewing.
A Dry vs Liquid comparison was not at all my goal. I was just trying to determine what yeast I liked for my English Porter recipe. I am wanting to rebrew that recipe with S-04 or maybe with Verdant too. I do like WLP013, but I just don't like the hassle of liquid yeast.
Thanks for the info about Ester production in dry v. liquid. Based on the discussion here, I've procured a couple packs of dry yeast. How do you suppose (or know from experience) the Ester profile changes if the yeast are saved and re-used? Would the lack of Ester production carry over to future generations even if they are never dried?
