Hey!
I'm asking about an issue that goes decades back to the dawn of my homebrewing career.
Back in the days of canned malt extract with those "instructions" on the label and those 5lbs of sugar that produced a cidery brew that left you feeling like you swallowed a pile of campfire embers and then had you sharting through the eye of a needle at 40 paces the morning after, the only yeast available for homebrewing was this brand called Great Dane. There were just two strains: ale and lager. The tiny package had a sketch of that breed of dog on it and it was, back then, a separate but necessary item when assembling your homebrew arsenal in the store. They didn't have kits back then.
I got into tinkering with the different malts, different strains of hops, and adjunct proportions, formulating recipes, understanding the sanitation issues, and came up with a Canadian-style pale ale that tasted somewhat like like Alexander Keiths, and an English-type ale that tasted just like Worthington E.
In winter time the basement would get definitely too chilly for ale yeast so I'd switch to the Lager yeast. The Great Dane Lager yeast would ferment successfully and vigorously in primary even below 50F. I had a batch come up tasting just like Molson Canadian -draft version. Another batch I brewed to the specifications of the German law of purity came up tasting like Gosser.
Do any of you remember that yeast? Have any of you ever worked with it? I'm curious to know what ever happened to that brand. I did a 'net search and didn't get the results I hoped.
Thank-you in advance for your replies.
I'm asking about an issue that goes decades back to the dawn of my homebrewing career.
Back in the days of canned malt extract with those "instructions" on the label and those 5lbs of sugar that produced a cidery brew that left you feeling like you swallowed a pile of campfire embers and then had you sharting through the eye of a needle at 40 paces the morning after, the only yeast available for homebrewing was this brand called Great Dane. There were just two strains: ale and lager. The tiny package had a sketch of that breed of dog on it and it was, back then, a separate but necessary item when assembling your homebrew arsenal in the store. They didn't have kits back then.
I got into tinkering with the different malts, different strains of hops, and adjunct proportions, formulating recipes, understanding the sanitation issues, and came up with a Canadian-style pale ale that tasted somewhat like like Alexander Keiths, and an English-type ale that tasted just like Worthington E.
In winter time the basement would get definitely too chilly for ale yeast so I'd switch to the Lager yeast. The Great Dane Lager yeast would ferment successfully and vigorously in primary even below 50F. I had a batch come up tasting just like Molson Canadian -draft version. Another batch I brewed to the specifications of the German law of purity came up tasting like Gosser.
Do any of you remember that yeast? Have any of you ever worked with it? I'm curious to know what ever happened to that brand. I did a 'net search and didn't get the results I hoped.
Thank-you in advance for your replies.
