What are your top liquid yeasts?

[pd230soi]

Good day everyone.

I am currently living in a country that has no organic home brewing infrastructure. Therefore I use mail order (internet) to get my supplies – all dry. I will be back in the US on a business trip and was thinking about buying a selection of liquid yeasts to bring back on the plane (in checked luggage in a small soft sided cooler).

Then once back home I would use those yeasts to make a variety of beer (all Ales no lagers at this point) and commence yeast washing and yeast banking. I have been practicing yeast washing with my dry yeast beers just to gain experience it seems to be going well (thanks to you al).

I tend to like the following styles
Porter
IPA
Tripel
Stout
Bitters
Brown Ale

Question 1, If I were to purchase 5 – 10 liquid Ale yeasts what would be your top choices. If you time to tell me why that would also be great.
Question 2, for my purposes is there any difference in liquid yeast suppliers?
Question 3, Does one supplier do a better job than another packing and shipping liquid yeast? I would just purchase that nothing else at this time.
Question 4, any particular equipment I should purchase?

Any advice for me?

Thanks
Jon

 

[Pappers_]

Jon, I am using White Labs WLP028 Edinburgh for most of my beers. I sometimes will use a belgian or a lager yeast, but the Edinburgh is my main yeast. I like it because it lends a good malt/hop balance, is clean if fermented at lower temps and a little estery if used at higher temps, very flocculent, yields a solid and firm yeast cake, and it works steadily but not explosively in normal situations.

Plus for me, just getting to know how a strain of yeast works, how to work with it, has been good.

If I were in your situation, I would also get a belgian witbier or some other belgian style yeast, because you really have limited options with those styles in dry yeast.

I purchase White Labs because my local homebrew store carries it - I've not had any problems with White Labs. Also, the White Labs site is full of good information, well worth poking around.

I'm curious about the first sentence in your post - do you mean you use organic malts and hops? And where in the world are you?

Cheers, Salud, Skaal

 

[FromZwolle]

i would think that Wyeast would be a better choice to take on an airplane. Their smack packs look pretty harmless, but it feels like a vial of White labs might cause airport security to have a heart attack.

 

[pd230soi]

Thanks for the replies.

I am in Sofia, Bulgaria for a while and they do have breweries, there are no homebrew shops that I have found. I found I guy willing to import LME, but at a high cost. I also might have found a guy who sells hops to the breweries, but I think its very large shippments of limited types.

So..... I use the internet.

I am planning on putting the yeast in my checked luggage to avoid getting security too excited at the checkpoints.

So at this point its....
1. White Labs WLP028 Edinburgh
2. Some Belgian type yeast

Jon

 

[nutty_gnome]

As a traveller I agree about the vials vs smack packs. 6 cozy WLP vials in a cooler are likely to raise some eybrows with security and customs. Maybe you'd get through, maybe not. Smack packs seem to be a more attractive alternative.

 

[motobrewer]

WLP007 Dry English for porter/stout/brown
for bitter, Wyeast 1275 Thames Valley, altho right now Wyeast 1469-PC is out.

IPA, i'd just use US-05.

 

[hal2814]

German Ale, Belgian, Kolsch, Steam, Weinstephan, and Trappist are the yeast styles I've used but not found a suitable dry yeasts for. I don't think White Labs or Wyeast would make a difference. I'm pretty sure both are shipped air mail to the brewshops so either should survive the flight. Here's the list of my preferred strains for these (all Wyeast since my LHBS doesn't stock White Labs):

1007 - German Ale
1388 - Belgian Strong
2575 - Kölsch II (or 2565 - Kölsch if you can't find 2575)
2112 - California Lager
3068 - Weihenstephan Weizen
3787 - Trappist High Gravity

Now keep in mind that the yeast is going to have a tendency to mutate. By just using basic washing, I've gotten 8 generations out of 2112 before it starts to lose its characteristics. The Weizen and Trappist yeasts get problematic on me after 3 generations or so. I haven't washed the others enough to know how they will do.

 

[AmandaK]

I'm a huge fan of Wyeast 1450 - Denny's Favorite.

It can be used in nearly every beer style that is even vaguely considered American. I've used it in a pumpkin, IPA and now in a milk stout.

 

[ForRealBeer]

I might grab up some Rogue Brewery's "PacMan" Yeast too, in addition to the selections above. Wyeast 1764-PC and it can be a little troublesome to find, but a number of homebrew suppliers in the US have it...even if one is not nearby, perhaps you could get it delivered to your location and take it home with you.

Proprietary yeast strain from Rogue breweries in Oregon. Ferments very clean with little or no esters which will highlight your grain and hop flavors. Massive attenuation will ferment just about everything it can get its cells on, leaving you with a low final gravity for crisp, refreshing brews. It prefers to ferment in the 62 to 64° range, but it can handle temps down to the mid 40's and up to 70° depending on what style you are making, which makes it a great all-around workhorse yeast for any beer that you want to completely ferment. Great flocculation characteristics leave your beers clear, too. Try it in a Barley Wine!

Profile (from Wyeast): A versatile yeast strain from one of Oregon's leading craft breweries. Pacman is alcohol tolerant, flocculent, attenuates well and will produce beers with little to no diacetyl. Very mild fruit complements a dry, mineral finish making this a fairly neutral strain. Pacman's flavor profile and performance makes it a great choice for use in many different beer styles.

Beer Styles: American pale ale, American Amber Ale, American brown Ale, Brown Porter, Cream ale, Irish Red Ale, Strong Scotch Ale, Dry Stout, American Stout, Russian Imperial Stout, American IPA, Imperial IPA, American Barleywine, Fruit Beer, Spice / Herb Beer, Vegetable Beer, Christmas / Winter Specialty Spice beer, Other Smoked Beer, Wood-Aged Beer

 

[strat_thru_marshall]

Are you going to be in a city with a large homebrew shop while you're on your business trip? It may be best to go to the wyeast and whitelabs websites and read up on all they offer, and then make your choices based on which strains the brew shop has in stock. There are some pretty common ones that most places will have, but if you can only hit one or two shops then you might be in a situation where you just have to choose from what they currently have on hand. I think I would try to get as many strains as I could to take back, it's tough to really make a judgement on if you like a yeast based on someone else's recommendation. It's a great starting point, but it really comes down to the way the yeast performs in your system, and your own personal taste.

That being said, I like White Labs 007 for ales, 300 for hefe, and 838 for lagers. There are many others that are great, but those ones seem to pop back up over and over in my brewery.

 

[Freezeblade]

I mostly do english and belgian style beers, and my top liquid yeasts are as follows:

WLP023: Bitters, Pales
WLP005: Browns, Milds, Porters, Stouts
WLP530: Trappest Beers, Enkles, Dubbels, Tripples, etc.

When you can get it, WLP037 is awesome instead of 005, it's the Samuel Smith Strain.

 

[Banjoman76]

Wlp007
wlp001
wlp005

us05

 

[samc]

I pretty much like neutral yeasts so I tend to use wlp001 or Denny's Favorite. Fermentis US-05 when I am looking for simple.

I'd suggest PM'ing MattHollingsworth on HBT if he does not chime in here. He could probably point you to some sources or maybe scan through his posts as he is in Zagreb, Croatia and brews a lot.

 

[tunoffun]

no WLP002 yet?

color me surprised.