Favorite Yeast for brewing Real Ale

The Homebrew Forum

Help Support The Homebrew Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
For bitters I love Crossmyloof Beoir - fast and sticks to the bottom, producing nice clear beer, just fermenting stout with Ringwood and have high hopes for it. Kveik Voss works really well for pales - nice clean taste, sae us-05. Notty is very good as well. Never had much success with S04, but I know local brewery who used exclusive use only this strain for all the beers
 
I’ve had good results using Wyeast 1450 for stouts and porters. It’s super clean, malt forward as well as hop forward. The only negative with this yeast that I’ve found is that I could not get it to flocculate. Not much of a problem for dark beers but I had a pale bitter sat cold crashing in a fridge for 5 weeks and it was still murky after all that time. Tasted nice though.
 
I'll agree
Slightly off topic as we're talking about real ale, but CML beirm yeast has not let me down yet either. I've tried Four, Five, Hell and Midland no issues.
I'll agree with that CML yeasts are great. Never had a bad one. Wish they had a sour like Philly sour if they did I wouldn't buy anybody's else's.
 
WLP006 Bedford Ale yeast, purportedly the Charles Wells strain. Easily the best yeast I've used for English style ales.
 
Maybe only slightly off then - you wanted to know about 'real ale' yeasts in particular, and I wasn't helpful in that regard.
The reason I asked is that,as mentioned,lots of breweries use dry yeast.
I'm keen to try liquid but I've no where near tried enough dried and not got the facilities to store yeast from liquid pitches..which makes it easier in the wallet!
 
I've been brewing with S-04 for 9 years and it was my go-to yeast until recently, along with Wilko Gervin. I then realised it was taking something away from the beer, I do think it has changed. Never got on with the Crossmyloof yeasts, I bottle all my beer and merely looking at a bottle seemed to stir up the yeast in the bottom, it's so mobile.

MJ Liberty Bell is my new favourite, packs solid in the bottom of bottles eventually and let's the flavour really shine through.
 
Does that funky quality come through in an APA or does it accentuate fruity hop flavours?
Well, I believe Shipyard use it in their IPA and I find that drink most pleasant. Of course I've only tasted the Marston's variant, but it's fairly complex for a relatively low abv IPA. I don't get anything "funky", though.
 
Tend to use Lallemand London (formerly ESB) for real ales. Its a poor attenuator though, so have to up the grain bill.
 
I’ve found Fermentis yeasts to be pretty reliable, and have used both S-04 and S-05 quite a bit. I’ve got an American Pale conditioning, fermented with Lallemand Verdand IPA, and a stout bubbling in the fermenter with White Labs Irish Ale. First time for both of those, will report back in a few weeks.
 
I regularly used Wyeast 1469 West Yorkshire for a few years and 1728 Scottish Ale occasionally. Both make good beer although I'm not sure I got all that much character from the Yorkshire strain.

I want to try Ringwood sometime, but I'm on a run with Omega's Vermont strain which was apparently originally English.
 

Latest posts

Back
Top