Cheap yeast.

[Bob Monkhouse]

I've registered on here to get advice from people who know more about homebrewing than we do- so that would be everyone! My wife and I have brewed beer and cider from kits on and off for many years with a reasonable amount of success but we've always wanted to havew a go at doing it properly(mashing).
We've just done our first mashing to a recipe from Dave Lines book and have chosen Tiger lager, mainly because our daughter is living in Kuala Lumpur at the moment and its quite popular out there.
We have now bought the ingredients to make Special Brew, again from the same book and, whilst the malt grains are reasonably priced, I can't say the same about the yeast sachets. Its cost us the same for three sachets of yeast as it has for the malt. Bread yeast is coppers so why the big difference in price for brewing yeast? Whats the cheapest way to produce brewing yeast? Whats the difference between this and bread yeast? Any and all comments will be gratefully received.
It might make some of you laugh when I say that neither of us actually drink any more. :rofl:

 

[pittsy]

hi your best bet is liquid yeast which will give you a much better beer but at £6 plus it seems expensive but not if you use a demi 8 pints of boiled cooled water 500 g of dried malt extract (£4) and a liquid yeast vial add together mix well so plenty of bubbles and leave for 5 ish days with an airlock at room temp(18/20c) when it has finished mix up well and pour into 12 plastic bottles then store in fridge . you now have 12 vials so now you take out of fridge 2 hours before you use 1 in a pint of boiled cooled water with 100g of dried malt extract 2 days before you want to use it , when your down to your last 2 bottles do step 1 again to make another 12 bottles , you can do this 5 plus times , so apart from your DME (up to £20 worth ish) you have 50 ish yeasts for around £6 :

 

[pittsy]

p.s welcome

 

[Mark1964]

A good way is to buy bottle conditioned beers like fulers and thwaites drink 3/4 of the beer and then add the remaining beer which has the yeast in to dme or wort and grow the yeast then split into vials

 

[RokDok]

You can very easily culture the yeast from a bottle of brew that you've already done.

Alternatively you can buy a bottle of bottle conditioned beer and culture the yeast from that. The CAMRA book Good Bottled Beer Guide describes 1,300 bottle conditioned beers with a smattering of foreign brews too, although some of those will use a different yeast to bottle condition.

Plenty of info on here about that or better still get Graham Wheelers Book Brew Your Own British Real Ale which explains the method clearly.

What a tragedy that you don't sample the result of your toil.

Cheers

RD

 

[RokDok]

P.S.

Welcome

 

[Good Ed]

I'd agree and second all the posts above, but I think you are missing the point of brewing, yeast contributes up to 70% of the character of the beer that you are brewing, so to start with the premise of cheap yeast you are straight away limiting your ability to produce a quality beer, even if you use a whole vial of liquid yeast costing £6 for a 23l brew it's still very economic.

 

[oz11]

There is another option which I don't think has been mentioned yet and that's to find a friendly, local brewery and ask if you can have a little bit of yeast. They can only say no, luckily mine said yes. Of course, it might not be any more exotic than Safale S04, but you might get lucky with something a little better. I did :)

 

[Dronfieldbrewer]

Yep...

go and see the local micro. I picked up a job lot of brewers yeast from my local micro, they now will sell me malt at cost and have given me some pointers as to how to improve my beer. Remember that a top cropping yeast at comercial levels will chuck off about 50 litres of yeast per brew, they only need to repitch a couple of litres the rest usually goes down the drain

Usually micro owners are ex homebrewers that have taken the plunge and love it when someone comes along with a bit of enthusiasm and a passion for the same thing as they do.

 

[BarnsleyBrewer]

Use Nottingham. :thumb:

 

[Good Ed]

Brewlab have a huge range of yeasts http://www.brewlab.co.uk/analysisandresearch.asp#homebrew all for £5, you can then make up a starter and split many ways for future brews.

They are very helpful, you can contact them with what you are brewing and they will recommend a yeast :thumb:

 

[Bob Monkhouse]

Thanks very much for the helpful tips on the yeast. We've just bought Graham Wheelers brewing book and I'm at present reading through it, I've taken in some of his-and yours- advice on the culturisation of yeast and the next step will be to visit a micro brewery, we'd both like to see how its made properly so a trip to one in sunny Huddersfield is on the cards. We will certainly be sampling some of our homebrew when our daughter returns from Malaysia in september, not too much hopefully as five years away from beer isn't a good way to start sampling lots of different brews!!! I feel a headache coming on. :rofl: