W-34/70 easily takes the prize for being the best.
There's no single "best" yeast, it all depends on context. Usain Bolt often "takes the prize for being the best" at sprinting, but he's not much use in a marathon and he truly sucks at nuclear physics.
34/70 is very popular - supposedly the most-used yeast strain in the world if you count commercial lager breweries - but popular does not mean "best". It's very expensive by dry yeast standards, and it doesn't drop particularly well. The guys over on the
warm-fermented yeast thread prefer Californian lager yeasts (in particular Mangrove Jack M54) over 34/70, as they perform at least as well at warmer temperatures and drop much more cleanly.
In fact a Californian lager yeast is a pretty good all-rounder if you're looking to make not just lagers, but US-style beers as well.
I brew a lot of IPAs and than browns/porters/stouts. I mostly use white labs California Ale Yeast
If you're buying a bunch of yeasts before you go, it's probably worth getting odd packets of things like BRY-97 just to try in ales even if US-05 (closely related to, but not identical to the WLP001 you're used to) is the obvious choice as a workhorse for US beers.
For British-style beers, you want to trade some attenuation for mouthfeel and yeast flavours. S-04 can go a bit tart over 68F or so, which is not something to the taste of many USians, so I'd tend towards the British strains from Lallemand/Danstar. Mangrove Jack M15 is also worth a go - some people get frustrated at its relatively low attenuation and ABV tolerance (~8%) but that's just typical of British yeast, and you do get fruit and mouthfeel in return.
As has been mentioned S-33 and Windsor appear to be close relatives that probably came from the same source. A more distant cousin is T-58, which can be viewed as a POF+ version of those two - POF is the package of enzymes responsible for the phenolic flavours characteristic of Belgian beer. T-58 is a relatively mild yeast for phenolics, it's more a gentle pepperiness, it's allegedly used to produce some world-class Belgian dark beers like Pannepot. It can also be used in small amounts to "spice up" more boring yeast.
Isomerization's DNA analysis of Treehouse Julius (and subsequent brewing experiments by others) suggests that they're making one of the benchmark New England IPAs with a yeast blend that's something like 90% S-04, 7% T-58 and 3% WB-06.
I'd probably substitute the WB-06 with Lallemand/Danstar Munich
Classic (_not_ "Munich") as it's a much better all-round yeast if you want to use it on its own for wheat beers. It's just as well you're not interested in saisons as that seems to be one style where nobody's terribly happy with the dry strains that are available, the likes of Belle/M29 are OK-ish though.
The principle of blending dry yeasts is not used enough, traditionally most breweries used a mix of strains as strains tend to be good at attenuating, or flavour, or flocculation - but never all three. Supposedly Windsor and Nottingham came from the same multistrain, and it's not a bad idea to pitch Windsor for flavour and then pitch Nottingham for performance later in the fermentation to finish off where Windsor started.
Can you get wine yeast? I've only tried it once, but K1-V1116 works for beer (most wine yeasts are not attenuative enough for beer)
K1-V1116 is unusual for a wine yeast in that it's POF- so doesn't produce the phenolics in beer that most wine yeast do. It's a good choice if you're in the kind of country that has wine yeast readily available but not beer yeast. Like many wine yeasts it has a K2 killer factor so doesn't play nicely in yeast blends, you usually have to use it on its own.
Wherever you are going, you'll should be able to get bread yeast; give it a try.
Bread yeast should generally be considered a last resort for beer unless you like Belgian beers -they're usually primitive yeast that are POF+. OTOH they can be used like T-58, as a pinch to add some complexity to a "workhorse" yeast, and that may be an effective way to do it if you're limited in how many packets you can take with you.
Talking of which - if yeast is a problem, then it's well worth figuring out how to keep it for repitching - see this forum's stickies. Liquid yeast is generally a more reliable starting point for repitching than dry yeast (the stress of the drying process seems to lead to a higher mutation rate, which reduces the number of usable generations) - even if you only get 6-8 generations before the yeast goes "off" then that all helps.
Another option would be to get some kveik - eg Omega Hothead for clean fermentations and something like Hornindal for more yeast character. Not only are they much cleaner at high/uncontrolled temperatures, they can be readily dried at home for reuse.
There is belief out there that using a starter on dry yeast depletes its nutrient reserves. Some people swear to it and some against it, who is right!? Who knows!!
I don't know where you get the idea that this stuff is controversial, if you're not sure about it then you've not been paying close enough attention. Wort needs aerating because yeast need oxygen to make sterols which are essential for yeast growth. Most makers grow their yeast for drying in a way that stuffs the cells full of sterols, so if you use dry yeast you don't need to worry _too_ much about aeration, whereas liquid yeast and yeast from starters don't have so many sterols per cell and so they need more aeration for good results. If you put dry yeast through a starter then the sterols don't go away, but if there's cell division then you will end up with fewer sterols per cell and a correspondingly greater need for aeration.
I always just rehydrate dry yeast, but there are mixed opinions on this topic as well...
It's pretty simple, although traditionally it's said that pitching directly will kill 50% of dry yeast, people who have actually looked at the viability of yeast made with modern methods have found that it's actually more like <20%, and Fermentis'
official advice now states that rehydrating is no longer necessary for their E2U-branded yeasts (which includes pretty much all their beer strains).
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