Recipe advice : yeast strain experiment

[Locutus_Weeps]

Hello Everyone, I am a new poster so please go easy on me. I am trying to keep to posting conventions and rules.

I am after some all grain recipe advice from you learned lot for a yeast strain experiment I have planned.

Brew UK is currently offering a "liquid yeast lucky dip". You can see this here: https://www.brewuk.co.uk/liquid-yeast-lucky.html#review-point

This means that you get 5 (slightly) out of date liquid yeast packages from wyeast, white labs etc. We are assured that with a starter these will work fine.

I would really love to learn more about liquid yeasts and the contribution they can bring to beer but I've always been a bit put off by the price. So far I have only ever used pretty generic dried yeast.

What I was thinking was to brew a 23 litre batch and split it 5 ways into demijohns trying a different yeast in each one.

I was also thinking about going for one of the all grain recipe packs partly because of my experience (see below) and to avoid buying surplus ingredients and partly because I would feel the recipes are a safer bet - if it tastes bad its more likely to be the yeast than the receipe being improperly balanced.

The recipe packs are here: https://www.brewuk.co.uk/beerkits/c...rews/ag-starter-kits.html?dir=asc&order=price

My other other idea was to do a fairly straightforward SMaSH type beer and compare the results in that.

Can anyone recommend a recipe or recipe pack that is likely to help bring out the yeast character. This is going to be an ale and I might go for a lighter or darker type of beer. Not really bothered about the type, my instinct would be something relatively simple so as to make it easier to tell what the yeast is adding.

Please bear in mind the yeasts could be anything from English, American, Belgian, bacteria or bretts.


a bit about me and my brewing experience:

About 7 - 8 years of kit and extract brewing experience. Around 1 year of all grain but only done a handful of batches. Feel confident enough about the actual procedure itself.

 

[MrPowers]

If the yeasts could be anything, I would definitely go with a relatively simple, not too much hop flavor, SMaSH beer. That will give you the cleanest platform for evaluating the differences between the yeasts.

Maris Otter or Golden Promise to about 1.050.

Then use some mild (noble like) hop for bittering and flavor to about 30IBU. Think: EKG, Fuggles, Stryian Goldings, etc....

That's my vote.

 

[chickypad]

^ I second this. Sounds like a fun experiment, be sure to post back!

 

[blackelbow]

I also second the plan for a simple recipe. Not necessarily a smash beer, but pretty close. If it were me, I'd probably do 80-90% of a base grain (pils, Maris otter, etc), and wheat malt for the rest, then a couple doses of some noble hops and/or EKG. Definitely post the results when you're done!

 

[Miraculix]

I would do the same but I would bring the ibus down to 20.

If you will end up with a lacto pack, you might even want to lower the ibus to 5 to 10 for this specific sour.

 

[Locutus_Weeps]

Thanks for the advice everyone. I will do something simple. I do have some Willamette pellets in the freezer, it is several years old but had a sniff and smells absolutely fine. It isn't a 'noble' hop as such but I believe it does come up in a few different styles.


What you guys think? Might be bringing in too many additional variables?

 

[chickypad]

That should be fine, Willamette is a milder hop similar to English varieties.

 

[Sadu]

You are getting 5 packs of yeast at a good discount, with no say in what you get. I agree they should be fine if you make a starter in advance of brewday, and if you don't know about starters this is a good time to learn, plus it's a good skill to have.

I would look at this from a slightly different angle to what you are suggesting though.

To me this is an opportunity to try 5 different beer styles that you may not have tried before.

For example, say you get given bock yeast. Sure, you could ferment out some generic low-hopped SMaSH wort, but I'd be more interested to know if bock yeast makes a good bock. Why not use the yeast to make a full batch of bock since that's what it's designed to do? If you haven't brewed bocks before then you learn and taste something new, if you are familiar with the style then you get to see if the fancy liquid bock yeast does a better job than your normal choice of dry yeast.

By the way, not saying that your idea is a bad one. Nothing at all wrong with learning about different ingredients in a controlled manner. This is just another way of looking at it.

All depends what yeasts you get in the end. It's more likely that they are the obscure varieties that don't have very high turnover, and I'd bet you get at least one sour bacteria blend in there.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

Most of my brewing is testing hops and yeast in split batches. 100% Otter to 1.048, bitter with EKG (I have a house rule that EKG goes in everything) or alpha extract (more sensible) to 25IBU, 13l for less intense Eurohops, 17l for shouty US hops, 100g pack of hops across 10/0/whirlpool/dry, split into 3 or 4 gallons respectively, different yeast in each, make sure one of the yeasts is a clean one to give a baseline for comparison with the others and to see what the hop is like without too much interference. Works well.

However... You will be getting yeast that other people don't want, which will mean weird stuff. Talking to people it seems reasonable to expect something like 1 "normal" ale, 1 saison, 1 lager and 2 Brett/wild. Frankly even if you toss one in the bin you've still got 4 for £10 which is the same price as US-05. Here's an example of someone who got WLP060 US Ale blend, WLP565 Saison, Brett-C and two Brett blends and ended up making a cherry Brett ale, a Bretted graff and all sorts : http://www.brewuk.co.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=51791

So I tend to the idea mooted above - your basic idea is sound, and is something that's well worth doing, but the nature of this selection means that it's maybe more fun to force you to take on styles you're not used to. It's a great exercise for intermediate brewers who are feeling a bit jaded.