liquid yeast vs. dry yeast

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jmarx13

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Brewing my second 5 gallon. Decided based off experimenting to upgrade to a liquid yeast for the IPA I am brewing. White labs.
Is it worth it? Or should I stick to dry yeast in the future.
I am not quite ready to use a yeast starter.
 
Dry yeast can deliver just as good of beer as liquid/slurry. The main advantage to dry yeast is that it is less expensive and can be stored (in the refrigerator) for a year or more. The disadvantage to dry yeast is that it is only available in a few strains. But they will all make good beer.

If you are trying to create a specific flavor or style you may want to spend the money on a liquid yeast that fits that style. If you are simply trying to produce a decent drinkable beer for everyday consumption, the cost savings of dry yeasts may win the day.

I tend to use dry yeasts a lot because I have no interest in entering my beer in competition. I know that when I make a certain recipe using BRY-97 or Nottingham, or whatever, it will perform just as I expect and the beer will be exactly what I want. And I am making my beer solely for my own consumption. I do buy liquid yeast for my Irish Red Ale and a few others because those yeasts give flavor profiles the dry yeast strains just can't produce.

While you are starting out stick with whatever the recipe calls for. When you're ready to get a little more adventurous give some thought to trying alternative yeast strains. US-05 and BRY-97 for American ales, S-04 or Nottingham for English ales.
 
If there was a wider variety of dry yeast I'd love to use, never had a problem with it. Plus 5 minutes of rehydrating dry yeast vs 2 days of a starter is a no brainer
 
That and consider the fact that starters are not "absolutely" necessary. You can make amazing brews without it. I've pitched one package of liquid yeast into wort of og 1.070 with great success. Thats without even knowing the package date. I would reason to believe it was still probably 50% viable though.

If you are worried about it then you can also pitch multiple packages into the wort no problem. Starters are not necessary, they just help a lot.
 
jmarx13 said:
Brewing my second 5 gallon. Decided based off experimenting to upgrade to a liquid yeast for the IPA I am brewing. White labs.
Is it worth it? Or should I stick to dry yeast in the future.
I am not quite ready to use a yeast starter.
Click to expand...

Using liquid vs. dry really isn't an "upgrade". There are more varieties of liquid vs. dry. But, if you're going to use WLP001 for your IPA, be aware that it's the same strain (Chico) as US-05 dry yeast, plus you have to make a starter with 001 to have enough cells. Simply pitching a vial is under-pitching and can lead to problems whereas one packet of dry contains plenty of cells for 5 gallons up to 1.060.

Want to upgrade your fermentation? Pitch into 60-62*F wort and hold the temp in the 64-65*F range the first 4-5 days.
 
I would advise you get familiar with an online yeast pitch calculator and realize that one package (either dry or liquid) may not be enough.

Underpitched worts suffer and make ****ty beer (unless of course you are looking for an abundance of yeast character).

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Home Brew mobile app
 
If you have a 1 gallon growler/carboy and some DME, you're ready to make a yeast starter. You put so much effort into your brew day, why not go one step further and make sure you have lots of healthy yeast? Not to say that dry packets or vials won't work, but the benefits of making a starter seem well worth the effort. Just my 2 cents anyway.


Sent from my iPad using Home Brew
 
Yeast starters are a great way to go and in a few months or a year or so you'll probably want to look into them as they will help your beer get better. For now, though, follow the instructions in your kit, learn to be excellent in your sanitation practices and keep your fermentation temperatures down into the mid 60's. Then enjoy your beer. Read a lot and again, enjoy the beer you are making because it will be good. As time passes it will get even better.
 
jmarx13 said:
Brewing my second 5 gallon. Decided based off experimenting to upgrade to a liquid yeast for the IPA I am brewing. White labs.
Is it worth it? Or should I stick to dry yeast in the future.
I am not quite ready to use a yeast starter.
Click to expand...

Unless you are brewing a style with a unique yeast derived flavour just stick with dry yeast. Belgians, hefeweizens, sours and some english styles go with liquid yeasts. If you are brewing American IPAs or styles with a clean fermentation character, just go with dry US05 for ales or dry w34/70 for lagers - its cheaper and easier than anything liquid.
 
I've used smack packs in wort up to 1.060 or so pitched right in that started visibly fermenting about as fast as one in a starter for the same OG. I like the WL029 kolsh yeast for ales with lager-like qualities. Sort of a hybrid lager as I call them,because the yeast's sweet spot is 65-69F for those lager-like qualities.Bavarian wheat blend from Wyeast for wheat ales is good. But for my average ales,US-05 is what I use most. Re-hydrated of course.
 
For an IPA, US-05 is a great yeast, and as was mentioned, it is used in many recipes in liquid form - either as WLP001 or WY1056. If you are considering "upgrading" to either of those strains, consider just using the dry yeast for ease of use. If you are just interested in experimenting with starters, go for it.
 
The only thing that liquid offers is a bigger variety of choices. For many styles there are perfectly good dry yeasts. US-05, S-04, Nottingham, BRY-97 and Belle Saison are a few good dry yeasts.

Unfortunately there are not good dry alternative for styles like Belgians. For those liquid is the only good choice.
 
I am at a place in my brewing with dry yeast where I want to test possible better hop qualities using liquid yeast. I don't get the hop flavor or aroma I think I should. Prob not the response you were looking for and really a topic for another day. I have been brewing for a few years, almost entirely dry yeast due to cost and cell counts.
 
If variation in yeast is desired, that is easier obtained with liquid.

With any liquid yeast you only ever need to buy the strain once. Harvesting the yeast from the FV or overbuilding a starter and keeping some back for the next brew are two ways this can be done. It's easy. Starters are one of the easiest things to make.

Dry yeast can also be harvested but unless I'm going to use the slurry in the near future (1-2 weeks) I won't bother due to the lower cost of dry packs v DME for a starter from slurry.

Overbuiling my starter is what I now do. I no longer need to harvest slurry.
 
bigdongsr94 said:
I have been brewing for a few years, almost entirely dry yeast due to cost and cell counts.
Click to expand...
Cost and cell count used to be a factor for me too, but here's one way to get past it.

Buy a new pack of of liquid yeast and pitch it into a low gravity beer, like Centennial Blonde or an English Bitter (assuming you are using 1056/001 or 1968/002). When you rack your beer off the yeast cake, fill up a 1 pint mason jar with the slurry and throw this into the refrigerator until you're ready to pitch it into your next higher strength beer (I try to repitch within 2 weeks, but research detailed in one of the threads below suggests you could go out much longer than this.) And don't bother washing/rinsing it, it's not necessary and may do more harm than good. With this process, you don't need to ever build a starter and you can reuse your yeast over and over if your sanitation kung fu is sound.

Here are a couple good reads if you're interested in the process:
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=519995
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=166221
 
jwalker1140 said:
Cost and cell count used to be a factor for me too, but here's one way to get past it.

Buy a new pack of of liquid yeast and pitch it into a low gravity beer, like Centennial Blonde or an English Bitter (assuming you are using 1056/001 or 1968/002). When you rack your beer off the yeast cake, fill up a 1 pint mason jar with the slurry and throw this into the refrigerator until you're ready to pitch it into your next higher strength beer (I try to repitch within 2 weeks, but research detailed in one of the threads below suggests you could go out much longer than this.) And don't bother washing/rinsing it, it's not necessary and may do more harm than good. With this process, you don't need to ever build a starter and you can reuse your yeast over and over if your sanitation kung fu is sound.

Here are a couple good reads if you're interested in the process:
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=519995
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=166221
Click to expand...

Or you can make a starter with the slurry. Or you can direct pitch from the slurry. Or you can rack on top of the slurry.

I just moved to making oversized starters (WLP500). It certainly seems to hold good promise. However, the day before I also brewed up a Schwarzbier and direct pitched the slurry from a Pilsner I bottled earlier that (there wasn't much) day. I also skivved off a small amount to make a starter for an English Pale Lager I brewed mid week after that weekend.

All worked great so far.

Washing slurry seems like too much work to me. However, grabbing some in a jar to pitch a week or two later seems perfectly valid and I'll probably do that occasionally (especially from dry yeast), but oversized starters are the way to go for me.

I need to dip my toes in to freezing vials at some point. Oversized starters really only makes sense for 4-5 strains for me, because I don't brew other strains often enough, even though I do brew them once or twice a year. If I could freeze yeast, that would probably allow me to expand what I can save money on by repitching or oversized starters from 4-5 strains to probably a dozen strains. I'd only have to buy yeast for the truely rare stuff that I might only brew once and then not again for a few years.
 
Slurry is dirty. Unless you're super piss poor or work on a large scale and have a way to microbiologically monitor it, dump that crap and grow up a 7$ packet. Acid washing doesn't help wild yeast infections, only bacteria.
 
I see many posts stating that US-05 is the same strain as Wyeast 1056 and White Labs WLP001. Is there a list or chart that tells what the other dry yeast strains' liquid counterparts are? What would US-04's, Nottingham's, Windsor's, Wyeast/White Labs equivalents be?
 
azazel1024 said:
....I just moved to making oversized starters (WLP500). It certainly seems to hold good promise..... but oversized starters are the way to go for me.....I need to dip my toes in to freezing vials at some point. ..... If I could freeze yeast, that would probably allow me to expand what I can save money on by repitching or oversized starters from 4-5 strains to probably a dozen strains.
Click to expand...

You captured all of my thoughts perfectly! I too moved to oversized starters, why I waited??, way more cost effective! DME at $4/lb from LHBS, adds $1 to price of an avg starter (for 5g), so if 7 batches are cultured per smack pack (and not sure why not more?), yeast cost drops from $7 to $2 per batch. That's better than my 2:1 savings from purchasing sacks of grain and hops by the pound! Not to mention cheaper than dry yeast! And, I hate to rehydrate, best results require good timing from rehydration to pitch. Plus, from what I've read, the optimal yeast culturing from prior batches is from lower gravity beers (<60). My starters are 1.036. Easy peasy. Now to work on freezing! :mug:
 
HumulusHead said:
https://byo.com/resources/yeast
Click to expand...

Great list (that I bookmarked) that tells you various strains that work best for various beer styles, but I'm looking for mainly what liquid yeast is equivalent to what dry yeast. I've been doing a bit of searching around, and did find this thread where one of the members posted a PDF listing various equivalents.

post #26 by LeFreek


I like the idea of knowing what a certain strain's counterpart would be if I couldn't find that strain in either liquid or dry form (ex: Wyeast 1056 and WLP001 are identical to US-05).
 
butterpants said:
Slurry is dirty. Unless you're super piss poor or work on a large scale and have a way to microbiologically monitor it, dump that crap and grow up a 7$ packet. Acid washing doesn't help wild yeast infections, only bacteria.
Click to expand...

I find harvesting and using slurry to be a simple and effective process. I wouldn't agree with you in the least in this matter. Here is some crappy dirty slurry.

image.jpg
 
butterpants said:
Slurry is dirty. Unless you're super piss poor or work on a large scale and have a way to microbiologically monitor it, dump that crap and grow up a 7$ packet. Acid washing doesn't help wild yeast infections, only bacteria.
Click to expand...

If you trust your sanitation practices you shouldn't be worried about wild yeast and bacteria. Hydrating dry yeast is an even bigger potential for introducing unwanted microbes compared to washing yeast into sanitized jars. Either of these processes should not be an issue if you are using good sanitation practices.

Personally, I've used washed yeast with great success. To some people $3-7 for a pack of yeast is not a large investment but to me that represents a significant portion of brewing costs. Some yeast I've used like Block 15's Sticky yeast cost me $9. When the rest of the ingredients cost around $11 for a 2.5 gallon batch you can see how expensive the yeast can be.

I can harvest 2 pints of yeast from every 2.5 gallon batch and use the yeast through 5 generations without any issues (many people go over 5 generations with no problems). Since the yeast doubles every beer this allows me to brew 1->2->4->8->16 beers. That's 31 batches of beer from 1 packet of yeast. With a yeast like US-05 that would be ~$100 worth of yeast. With a yeast from Wyeast that's easily $200+ if you're buying new yeast every time.

I'm proud to be a yeast rancher and encourage everyone to embrace their inner yeast rancher as well :mug:
 
Oh I ranch... but everything is grow up from a slant.

You ever plate out your used slurries to see what's in there?

Are you guys doing cell counts then measuring slurry volume to get an appropriate pitch or just chucking mason jars in? Something to think about.

Rehydrating dry yeast is like multiple orders of magnitude a cleaner process than washing n repitching used yeast. There's no question, I don't care how sanitary you think you are.
 
It works best if you take the lid off the jar before chucking them in.

But in all seriousness I would be very interested to see the comparison between your slant sourced yeast and a dirty slurry. I'm sure you must have the data as you seem so adamant that we users of slurry are flirting with disaster. Your're not just giving an opinion are you.

Have you compared batches made with a crappy dirty unwashed slurry like the one I show and a clean starter. This guy has.

I am not performing cell counts, plating, bacterial or fungal analyses on the slurry. I practice sanitary harvesting methods and miraculously have never had an infected batch. I am a novice so I'm sure my luck will run out. I'm not a big proponent of," this works for me and my neighbors cat thinks my beer is great" approach. I do support following tried and tested methods. I would classify harvesting slurry thus.
Having said all that, I am moving to overbuilding starters for ease of storage. I really only need 1 extra jar of any given yeast ready to go for the next time.

I really don't think your doom and gloom pessimistic dismissive approach to this discussion is helpful. There are better ways. A great article on yeast harvesting which is also stickier in the yeast section by Woodland on this topic is here. He has lots of data to share. A great read for anyone following this thread.
 
butterpants said:
Are you guys doing cell counts then measuring slurry volume to get an appropriate pitch or just chucking mason jars in?
Click to expand...
I'm not. But fortunately a lot of other well-regarded pro and amateur brewers have so I don't have to. 1 billion / ml of slurry seems to be a pretty common average, and it gives me excellent results. YMMV

butterpants said:
Rehydrating dry yeast is like multiple orders of magnitude a cleaner process than washing n repitching used yeast. There's no question, I don't care how sanitary you think you are.
Click to expand...
And yet I prefer the results I get from repitching a measured amount of "dirty slurry" of liquid yeast. Go figure....
 
You people are so defensive!

Like I'm kicking dogs and making you watch... or babies... or baby dogs!!

A dissenting opinion is never a bad thing to have heard.
 
butterpants said:
Slurry is dirty. Unless you're super piss poor or work on a large scale and have a way to microbiologically monitor it, dump that crap and grow up a 7$ packet. Acid washing doesn't help wild yeast infections, only bacteria.
Click to expand...

Its worked fine for me and thousands of other homebrewers. Also brewers for thousands of years, since that is how brewing used to be done until the last century or so.

Brulospher did a fun test where he tried using slurry vs newly cultured starter from a vial and found that there was no statistical difference in flavor.

Sure, after a few dozen batches it is possible continuously reusing slurry might lead to adverse mutations in the strain eventually, and using a BUNCH of stout slurry in a blonde ale might lead to some darkening of the wort, or using a DIPA slurry in a light wheat beer might lead to a a bit more bitterness than you'd want. So long as you are brewing vaguely within style, the impact of using slurry versus "fresh yeast" from a starter should be minimal.

Now if you rack on top of the yeast cake time after time, eventually you ARE going to impact something, because you are going to have a massive amount of trub in there after a couple of batches. Pitching a reasonable amount of slurry batch after batch isn't too likely to cause any issues.
 
azazel1024 said:
That blonde ale looks like it turned out horrible. Look at how much the slurry darkened the beer!!!!

:D:mug:
Click to expand...

The lighting is terrible. The flash didn't capture the golden effervescence and ethereal quality of the head, the bubbles dancing their way to freedom at the surface. Almost magical.
 
Last edited:
Gavin C said:
The lighting is terrible. The flash didn't capture the golden effervescence and ethereal quality of the head, the bubbles dancing there way to freedom at the surface. Almost magical.
Click to expand...

Dangit, now I really want a beer.

I also really want to keep my job, so I am thinking I'll have to wait a few more hours.
 
butterpants said:
Rehydrating dry yeast is like multiple orders of magnitude a cleaner process than washing n repitching used yeast. There's no question, I don't care how sanitary you think you are.
Click to expand...

And yet somehow, I still manage to brew delicious, award-winning beers using dirty, filthy slurry collected directly from a carboy into sanitized Mason jars.

It's baffling.
 
Challenge accepted. Send me a bottle of your delicious dirty beer. I'll do a BJCP sheet on it (I'm certified - #D1320) then I'll filter it and plate on WLD and UBA medias and see what grows. PM and you can have my address. Non-biased results to be posted in detail here.
 
certainly try a liquid yeast, and decide for yourself.

I like the smack packs for liquid yeast. Just smack it and let it set till it blows up. Instant starter. That's not to say i don't use dry. I do. Just whatever i feel like for whatever beer. I usually just follow the package direction for dry, and 20 minutes is a nice starter for 5 gallons
 

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