Favorite Yeast? Help with odd taste form smack packs.

[kegtoe]

I have about 10 Extract batches under my belt now. About 5 batches ago I stopped using dry yeast packs and went to Wyeast smack packs. I noticed that my beers now have a different taste profile that I don't quite care for.

I am thinking about trying white labs vials next and maybe going back to dry yeasts.

What are other people's opinion regarding this? Same issues? What is your favorite yeast to use?

 

[Revvy]

Are you making starters for your liquid yeast? If not you are more than likely underpitching the amount of yeast, which could lead to off flavors. If you use Mr malty's calculator http://www.mrmalty.com/calc/calc.html

You would see that you need to use a starter for just about every beer above iirc, 1.025 starting gravity...

Additionally what liquid yeasts are you using? Most dry yeasts are neutral and clean, meaning they don't contribute a lot to the flavor profile of your beer. Most Liquid yeasts are not neutral, and we use them because they impart certain flavor characteristics to the beer. That may be your issue as well. THe strain you are using.

 

[kegtoe]

Thanks Rev. I have been using starters. I usually let the pack come to room temp and smack it in the morning prior to my brew day. I let the pack swell until early afternoon when i transfer to a flask with steralized wart. I then let the flask sit at room temp for 18-24 hours with me swirling it every few hours. I have been getting pretty good conversion of sugar to alcohol.

The wyeasts i have been using lately are a couple of belgian varieties and a couple german ales. Maybe i'll give it one more shot with an American ale yeast.

 

[jds]

Sounds like you're treating the yeast properly. Have you had commercial belgians and similar german ale styles? Both yeast types tend to produce more esters (and in the case of the belgian yeast, other stuff too) than the typical dry yeasts. I wonder if you just don't care for the flavor profiles.

 

[remilard]

By German ale do you mean wheat beer yeast? Those and Belgian yeasts have the most idiosyncratic flavor profiles of any beer yeast.

In almost all cases you can map the Wyeast or White Labs strain to a commercial brewery. You could try beer from that brewery and see if you find the flavor similar or different from what you are getting. All of these idiosyncratic strains are extremely sensitive to fermentation temperature, so the next place to look would be at tweaking that. You can often get information on the fermentation temperatures employed at the host brewery, see Brew Like a Monk for the Belgian strains.

Here is a mapping of Wyeast and White Labs products to the source brewery (from Kristin England via MrMalty.com)

http://www.mrmalty.com/yeast.htm