Interesting bread yeast experiment

[DannyD]

So here is an interesting experiment I did:
Sitting there one night with a 50kg bag of malt just “looking” at me. So I decided to make some beer? (Not so strange for a home brewer, now is it……?) But here is the twist. Toke 500g of malt ground it and did a quick mash for 30 min, (+/- 2 liter wort) boiled for 30min (with a few grams of hops) and let it cool.
Placed it in a 2l PET bottle and pitched bread yeast (when it was cold enough) which is not a new thing and has been done on basic brewing before (2007)
Fermented for 2days and then screwed the cap on tight (which was a bit scary when I left it out for another day, it was so hard I could not depress the bottle….wonder if it would explode?????) anywho……vented it a bit,
Tasted it this afternoon (day 4) ……..and it was pretty good………not better or worse then my (still green) CAL Common beer thats conditioning now……………..maybe even less yeasty then the cal-co

Thoughts???

 

[Tinga]

doing it side by side with a control group would e interesting. do it right though.

 

[dgremark]

I was going to post this before so this gives me the chance


I did a side by side wheat beer a couple months back and did a 5 gal batch and split up before going to fermentation into 2.5 batches. Anywasy One I used Nottingham and the other bread yeast. I opened them about 3 weeks ago and had a couple friends try each and I didn't tell them what was different and guess what????


They couldn't tell the difference!

So if in a pinch bread yeast will do it.....at least for me and on a wheat beer!

 

[broadbill]

I was going to post this before so this gives me the chance


I did a side by side wheat beer a couple months back and did a 5 gal batch and split up before going to fermentation into 2.5 batches. Anywasy One I used Nottingham and the other bread yeast. I opened them about 3 weeks ago and had a couple friends try each and I didn't tell them what was different and guess what????


They couldn't tell the difference!

So if in a pinch bread yeast will do it.....at least for me and on a wheat beer!

...or your friends don't know anything about beer! Sorry had to point out the obvious....

It would be interesting to put the beer in a competition to see what a trained judge would pick up upon. If I were to guess, they could tell that something was different/wrong with the beer (probably wouldn't occur to them that you fermented with bread yeast).

 

[DannyD]

So here is an interesting experiment I did:
Sitting there one night with a 50kg bag of malt just “looking” at me. So I decided to make some beer? (Not so strange for a home brewer, now is it……?) But here is the twist. Toke 500g of malt ground it and did a quick mash for 30 min, (+/- 2 liter wort) boiled for 30min (with a few grams of hops) and let it cool.
Placed it in a 2l PET bottle and pitched bread yeast (when it was cold enough) which is not a new thing and has been done on basic brewing before (2007)
Fermented for 2days and then screwed the cap on tight (which was a bit scary when I left it out for another day, it was so hard I could not depress the bottle….wonder if it would explode?????) anywho……vented it a bit,
Tasted it this afternoon (day 4) ……..and it was pretty good………not better or worse then my (still green) CAL Common beer thats conditioning now……………..maybe even less yeasty then the cal-co

Thoughts???

Had a full glass (or two - three) of it after work, and as can be expected the hop aroma was good but low on the bittering (short boil) easy fix with hop tea (i think)
tasted alot like most BMC beers that you get around here (go figure!)
one thing I can add is bread yeast is fine, but just dont use that stuff called "brewers yeast"........man that stuff is nasty!

 

[DannyD]

update.

Later did a batch with some smokey type grains, (from the failed barley roasting) and bread yeast. Tasted it after +/- 3 weeks and had that "sat-next-to-the-fire,-arme pit-from-a-bum" tast to it, so bottled it and to the cuboard they went. 4 months later opend a bottle and "holy crap"!! its drinkable!!! and not just drinkable its almost good!!

 

[BargainFittings]

My past experiments show that bread yeast will make drinkable beer.

I keep thinking it would be fun to do a split fermentation of several brands and ferment at different temperatures to see how they will perform.

The main thing I did not like about bread yeast is its very powdery and easy to disturb when transferring from the primary.

 

[TyTanium]

One note - bread yeast is not packaged under the same sanitary conditions as brewers yeast, so you run a greater risk of infection. That said, if its fresh the yeast probably take over pretty quick.

My BIL pitched bread yeast into a bottle of Welch's grape juice and called it wine. I called it NASTY. Glad your beer results have turned out better