The effect of yeast strain on the overall flavor of beer

[william_shakes_beer]

It seems like the yeast flavor character would be most evident in the lighter brews such as with a golden, red or straw color VS those with a more forward malt flavor. Is this a reasonable assumption? Do most people have a standard go-to yeast for malty brews such as porters and stouts vs a more particular selection for each of the lighter recipies?

 

[AmandaK]

Not entirely.

There are clean yeast and expressive yeasts. I've used both in dark ales (stouts, oud bruins and Belgian dark strong ales) that have about the same grain bill and have gotten wildly varying results.

I have go to yeasts for the character I want, not the color of the beer.

For instance, if I want a tripel with clove and pepper spices, it's Wyeast 3522. If I want more plums in a dubbel, I go with 1762. If I want bananas and clove, I go with 3068. If I want a clean American profile, I go with 1450. If I want a subtle English ester profile, I go with 1945.

See what I mean?

PS - Malty has no correlation with color. It is a flavor. A dry stout is actually not very malty whereas an Oktoberfest is really malty.

 

[bmick]

Yeast is a major, major component to the flavor of any beer, many people argue the biggest contributor out of all 4 main ingredients. If you ferment the same recipe with different strains, you'll have very different beers (a lot of people do cool experiments fermenting 5 one-gallon batches with 5 different yeast strains, etc.). It's a fun thing to experiment with.

 

[Retrofit]

I agree with bmick. The fastest way to learn the properties of a yeast (besides reading about it) is divide a wort and pitch different yeasts. All things being the same, the one difference is the yeast.

On this topic my buddy wanted to Brew a Hefe, but kept repitching a super gravity yeast. I insisted a hefe needs a hefe yeast and he couldn't make that beer work with a distillers yeast. Duh! I finally told him to call his beer a barley wine and people liked it, but it could never be the hefe he wanted!