Safale S-04 Ale yeast

Nooby question. Is Safale S-04 a top or bottom fermenting yeast. I looked and couldnt find an answer.

 

Top fermenting English ale yeast.

 

Top cropping.

 

Thanks. Is it safe to say that most ale yeasts are top fermenting?

 

That's kinda the definition of ale, is that it's top fermenting.

 

Thanks. I keep learning on this board

 

Top-fermenting versus bottom-fermenting isn't really a special quality of the yeast I don't think, it's dependent on the fermentation. Ales ferment warm and have a strong krausen (although in actuality it's the yeast floating around in solution that do the fermenting, not the yeast floating on top in the krausen). Lagers ferment cooler and so the yeast spends more time settled to the bottom 'cleaning up' and conditioning the beer. The terms indicate the type of fermentation the yeast is suitable for, but I don't think it really tells you anything more than simply calling it an ale yeast or a lager yeast. In other words - it's not something you have to worry about. As long as you aren't buying a yeast meant specifically for lagers, you're going to end up with a top-fermenting yeast suitable for ales.

 

I just did a plain recipe of apple juice and a packet of S-04. It fermented to 1.008 and it is absolutely delicious! I read someone say that they got extremely tart results from this but I didn't at all. The flavor is very much like the original apple juice which is good to me, I wanted to keep some apple flavor. It is just light and easy and I love it.

 

Oddly enough, that's not always the case. I always thought this myself until culturing Fuller's strain and reading on it. It's actually a bottom fementing Yeast. Just as there are Lager Yeast's that work in the Ale temperature range, with them all not all being to lower temperature fermentation.