How important is the yeast?

[TheOsprey]

I've been browsing through my Greg Hughes book, in a "ice inky done one AG so far" way, and it seems like every single recipe I'm interested in requires a different yeast.

What's the deal here? When I ordered for my 'simple AG', I just picked two yeasts that said ale on them. How much of a difference will there be between a 'Whitelabs WLP001 California Ale' yeast and a 'Wyeast 1187 Ringwood Ale' yeast?

I get that you'd want a different yeast for a porter than for a weissbier, but there are 5 porters in this book, which between them use:

Wyeast 1084 Irish Ale
Whitelabs WLP001 California Ale
Wyeast 1318 London Ale III
Wyeast 1028 London Ale

If I wanted to try these 5 porters, how much would it affect the beer to just buy Wyeast 1028? Or do you all have 50 little 11g packets of yeast at home?

 

[trueblue]

Not read said book but using a yeast like 001 for a porter doesn't seem right to me as that is normally a yeast for a hop forward beer and traditional English porters are malt forward, Americans may have a different idea. Getting the best yeast for the beer you want to create can be the difference between making a beer and making a great beer. For any brewer who wants to move on to another level I think The Yeast Book is the most important book for homebrewers.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Yeast-Practical-Fermentation-Brewing-Elements/dp/0937381969

 

[Edison]

Pretty important I’d say. It’s as important a choice as any other ingredient in the recipe. If you make a recipe with a different yeast it won’t turn out the same as the original design, possibly very different. There‘s definitely some strains that are closer than others. For instance, I went through a phase of fermenting everything with US-05 (pretty much dried WLP001/Wyeast 1056) but after a while realised my beers were all starting to feel a bit samey. There’s a massive difference in taste and behaviour between this and 1318 for instance. It’s like asking if theres much of a difference between medium crystal and dark crystal. You certainly could brew all the recipes with the same yeast and get different beers, but they won’t be the same beers as the original recipe.
I don’t brew constantly (well, not until lockdown!) so I have a limited library of 2 liquid yeasts, London III and A’Chouffe, two packets of dried lager yeast and an emergency sachet of US-05 in case of a stuck fermentation.

 

[DavidDetroit]

I just shoot in the general direction so, for me, it's not that important. I find a yeast the performs for a style, I stick with it.
I don't know if I could tell the difference between some of the yeasts and I suspect the perception of differences is important to the people who make them.

 

[Edison]

Yeah, I guess you could get away with something like 15-20 different yeasts. The same as you might want a specific malt, like aromatic, but don’t really mind which maltster it comes from. That’s pretty much where I’m at. You would probably want to pick a yeast depending on if the recipe is for a dry or sweet porter, or your own preference. I wouldn’t recommend a porter using 001 either, maybe S04, but personally I’m not a fan or that strain anyway!

 

[Surfingobo]

I’m currently brewing as many different styles as possible using the same yeast, plan is to go back and do a lot of them again with a different yeast at some point to compare. I know this might not give me the best beer first time but I doubt it’s going to be horrible.

 

[foxy]

It is as important as any other ingredient, try using different yeasts in the same recipe, low attenuation or high. More likely you will favour one to the other but both are capable of producing fine beers.
https://byo.com/article/attenuation-advanced-brewing/

 

[Sandimas]

I find myself asking this question often.

I've been brewing 11 years with a variety of yeasts, and despite all the advice, I really can't tell the difference between them taste-wise. I tend to pick them based on how much they firm up in the bottom of bottles, just used MJ M36 Liberty Bell for the first time and it's disappointed me because it's left quite a hazy beer.

 

[An Ankoù]

It's important if you want to make a close clone of a particular beer, otherwise you can use any suitable yeast for a wide rande of ales, porters and stouts. Before there was a great deal of choice, S-04 seemed to be the go to yeast although I'm not fond of it. Ringwood would be good for that range. For lager, though, you need to use lager yeast. Some yeasts are very specific as they have a distinct aroma profile. Don't use heffeseisen yeast of wit yeat or any of the specialist Belgian yeasts for English styles unless you're deliberately trying to do something weird. The California Ale yeast, by the way, will make perfectly good ales, porters and stouts as it has quite a neutral aroma profile.
Limit yourself to one or two yeasts so that you can harvest them and repitch in different beer batches. You'll save yourself a fortune.

But. If you want to make, say, a close TT Landlord clone, you definitely need West Yorkshire yeast. Ringwood will make an excellent beer, but it'll be slightly different.

 

[Oneflewover]

I'd much rather compromise on the hops or malts than the yeast if I was struggling for ingredients. That said it depends a bit what you are brewing. If. You are brewing very hop forward beers with a clean yeast you might not notice a great deal of difference between yeasts. However if you are brewing a lager, a saison, an abbey beer, a characterful English bitter - anything where the yeast is the star of the show - you will need the right yeast or you probably won't achieve what you set out to.

I have settled on a few go to liquid yeasts and keep them going for a few brews. I'm happy using dried yeast for anything where yeast character isn't the main attraction.

 

[MickDundee]

Although I primarily use dried yeast, finding the right yeast can definitely make a difference. I even have a preference between the 3 main dried American West Coast strains even though they supposedly have the same source - that’s based on behaviour mainly rather than taste.

 

[TheOsprey]

Thanks very much for all the feedback - interesting how as usual it varies from 'I just use baker's yeast, screw it' to 'I have a collection of 300 of the finest yeast strains'

Middle opinion seems to be it's quite important, but similar replacements will be OK, unless you're making a clone.

I think I'll be getting that yeast book.

Thanks everyone.

 

[Joust]

I always thought it made very little difference. But I used one the other day that made it taste so different.

Do an experiment. Get two very different yeasts and split a batch in half.

 

[trueblue]

Do an experiment. Get two very different yeasts and split a batch in half.

This is the best way to make a direct comparison. I have stated before many years ago I took part in a trial conducted by one of the first people to import liquid yeast splitting batches in half followed by blind tasting and most of the beers it was hard to imagine they were the same wort.

 

[Cwrw666]

I've been brewing 11 years with a variety of yeasts, and despite all the advice, I really can't tell the difference between them taste-wise. I tend to pick them based on how much they firm up in the bottom of bottles, just used MJ M36 Liberty Bell for the first time and it's disappointed me because it's left quite a hazy beer.

Much the same here. Obviously if you make something like a saison then you have to use a saison yeast as it imparts a lot of flavour but for anything from pale ale to stout I'd just use something like gervin or CML 5. Can't stand yeasts that you lose an inch of your bottle of beer to because it just won't stick to the bottom.

 

[MyQul]

Yeast is very important as without you cant make beer - brewers make wort, yeast makes beer.

Yeast does a number of different things. It can affect the flavour, mouthfeel, thin or thickness of a beer, how cloudy or clear it is. How well it packs down in the bottle. Im sure there are others I've left off this list

People pick yeasts for one or multiple of the above attributes. Beer style will play a big part in why you pick a yeast. An IPA for example is almost entirely hop flavour driven, whereas a bitter will be flavour driven by the yeast. But that's the 'classic' example for those styles. People are free to add whatever yeast to whatever style they like and they do.

As you note some people pick one yeast and use it as a workhorse* for almost every style of beer they make where other will use different yeast for eevery beer they make.

The best thing to do is to experiment. Dry yeast is very cheap and there's loads of different ones on the market to try. You might then want to try out some liquid yeast and there even more of those. Just have fun with it.

*If you cant be arsed with trying out loads of different yeast my advice for a workhorse yeast is nottingham/gervin/wilko ale. It's fairly clean but you can make loads of different styles of beer with it, everything from bitters to pseudo lagers. You can use it year round with no temp control as it has a massive temp range. I've used it from 15C in the winter to 27C in the summer

 

[Sandimas]

Much the same here. Obviously if you make something like a saison then you have to use a saison yeast as it imparts a lot of flavour but for anything from pale ale to stout I'd just use something like gervin or CML 5. Can't stand yeasts that you lose an inch of your bottle of beer to because it just won't stick to the bottom.

I'm glad I'm not alone.

I should have qualified my statement a bit more by saying that I do use a lager yeast for lagers and Belgian yeast for the Belgians, but like you I tend to go for Gervin or S-04 for British ales, from pale to stout. I've tried others, in fact I tried a good few to try to reproduce a fruity ruby ale brewed locally, but they all tasted the same to me.

 

[An Ankoù]

There's a lot of similarity between many of the English ale yeasts and a lot of similarity between the US West Coast yeasts. I reckon that in the UK, possibly in the US, too, breweries have borrowed yeast from each other and then repitched it many times until it takes on an identity of its own. But chuck in a continental yeast and you'll notice a big difference. i had a phial of French Ale yeast that I got in a lucky dip from Brew UK. Not knowing what to do with it, I bumped up my Summer Lightning recipe to 7½% abv and pitched it. It's unrecognisable as Summer Lightning, but it's made a fine beer tasting not unlike Aflingem Blonde.

 

[trueblue]

I should have qualified my statement a bit more by saying that I do use a lager yeast for lagers and Belgian yeast for the Belgians, but like you I tend to go for Gervin or S-04 for British ales, from pale to stout. I've tried others, in fact I tried a good few to try to reproduce a fruity ruby ale brewed locally, but they all tasted the same to me.

Personally I would rather have a tooth pulled than ever use S-04.

 

[Galena]

Personally I would rather have a tooth pulled than ever use S-04.

I used SO4 for my first AG brew, I won't bother again it is off my list of yeasts now.