Is yeast the new hops?

[Sadfield]

I am bit of a yeast fiend to the point I tend to phone any local brewery big or small to try and blag some yeast. Most of the more established ones are happy to share yeast but the 3 newish micros in my area all said they mainly use SO4 or SO5. Two fellow brewers did the Bermondsey mile before Christmas, I could not make it, all brewery's on the mile are known as craft brewers. As brewers they made a point of asking questions and I believe 4 of the brewery's said SO4 or SO5 the others they got no answer.
I was at the London and south east competition last month, ironically at one of the Bermonsey brewery's and had a great talk with one of the judges about hoppy beers and he was of the same opinion about the majority of new brewery's going by his own experience of judging around the country.

Apples and Oranges up here in the North West, with the brewers at Buxton, Cloudwater, Thornbridge and Marble all being linked in some way (mainly having all worked at Marble) there is probably more of a mindset as to not brewing generic beer with S04/US05. Cloudwater certainly don't (currently WLP4000 and JW Lees, printed on the cans), and from this article from James Kemp (head brewer at Marble) the others don't either. Nor my local brewery RedWillow who have their own house strain. I know these previously mention brewers are all really helpful to the other local breweries, and even to us homebrewers, so maybe they all push each other along to not brew generic beer with dry yeast. In Manchester there are also brewers like Chorlton who use wild yeasts and those harvested from vintage bottles of Berlinerweisse. I can understand new startups doing it to begin with as cash flow is a big issue. Get beer out of the door then worry about setting up to manage live yeast. Although, if your bench mark is Kernel who do a good job with US05, maybe that doesn't happen.

 

[geetee]

Have you thought about maybe adding a bit of something like Saccharomyces Bruxellensis Trois to the secondary and dry hopping. That would give you more fruitiness and add a bit more depth to whatever the S-04 has done. Another fruit option would be to combine a good English Ale yeast with one of the less dry French saison yeasts. Try adding it at different times but at amounts where the English yeast will remain dominant. Maybe add it when the English yeast flocs out with some new wort and ramp up the temperature until it finishes?

I used the WLP644 "trois" yeast in only in my last beer, trying to make a NEIPA and it probably the best most fruity beer I have ever made. I tend to be a bit of a hop miser and have 30 -40 packets in the fridge at any time so I have made some real ho p heavy beers with 4-6 types of hops and loads of them.

My last one had 5 types of hops BUT the different this time was the enduring hop fruitiness exactly what I have tried to get with hops and to some point failed. The yeast this time made a massive difference and I will be using it again,
The only problem I had was I had no CO2 so had to put 15 litres i n 5 litre kegs and the remaining 4 litres in swing top bottles. After a week or so I opened 1 bottle and it was superb, mango pineapple lovely thick body and juicy! A week or so later I took a bottle to a friend and it just gushed all over the place as has every other bottle I opened. I know for a fact that the bottles were clean, sterile and have never had this before so I reckon the low flocculating yeast is not so good for bottling but works superb when dispensed with CO2 in a 5 litre (and hopefully corny) keg.
I will be trying this yeast again and hopefully splitting it first to keep some spare for reuse.

 

[geetee]

I know a few of the local microbrewers who work around here and most of them start up using dried yeast usually SO4 or SO5 and none that I know of have any yeast handling, counting or management going on, it's not cost effective. One or two have started using other yeasts and one in particular now regards Vermont as their House yeast. This particular brewery has also moved on from standard bitter, session, brown ale to all sorts of sours, wheat, NEIPA and other wild styles all using the "proper" yeasts and the difference is incredible.

I think it's OK to start with the dried packs but any brewery with ambition has to experiment and look to a wider style of yeasts if they want to move their brewing beyond just managing and it's the same at home.

 

[The Idiot]

I used the WLP644 "trois" yeast in only in my last beer, trying to make a NEIPA and it probably the best most fruity beer I have ever made. I tend to be a bit of a hop miser and have 30 -40 packets in the fridge at any time so I have made some real ho p heavy beers with 4-6 types of hops and loads of them.

My last one had 5 types of hops BUT the different this time was the enduring hop fruitiness exactly what I have tried to get with hops and to some point failed. The yeast this time made a massive difference and I will be using it again,
The only problem I had was I had no CO2 so had to put 15 litres i n 5 litre kegs and the remaining 4 litres in swing top bottles. After a week or so I opened 1 bottle and it was superb, mango pineapple lovely thick body and juicy! A week or so later I took a bottle to a friend and it just gushed all over the place as has every other bottle I opened. I know for a fact that the bottles were clean, sterile and have never had this before so I reckon the low flocculating yeast is not so good for bottling but works superb when dispensed with CO2 in a 5 litre (and hopefully corny) keg.
I will be trying this yeast again and hopefully splitting it first to keep some spare for reuse.

I have a thought on this: you might have had it too, but here goes...

When 644 Trois first appeared, it was marketed as a Brett. Now, some claim that White Labs knew it was Sacc all along and sold it as Brett to get top dollar for small cell counts. I don't care about that, because ... well, I don't care. However, it wasn't brewers that discovered it was really Sacc, it was a check on the yeast's DNA!

That means that for a long time either White Labs thought it was Brett too, or hoodwinked people (I don't but that). Why? Because Trois (644) behaves like a Brett! Interestingly, the many people who raved about it before its lineage was exposed liked that it was a 'fast' Brett.

With Sacc, you can usually allow 3 weeks primary, a week secondary with dry hopping and you're done. Treating 644 like that ignores its general behaviour, which is Brett-like (albeit fast brett-like).

Now, a Brett can take 6-12 months eating through stuff. Before we knew 644 was Sacc we were all amazed that it would be done in 6-8 weeks. Today, we know it's Sacc, but it's important to remember we all thought it was Brett because of how it behaves!

As an example, as I type this I'm drinking a 644 fermented IPA. Very nice too. I left it in primary for 5 weeks, and it dropped from 1.052 to 1.009. I then dry hopped it for a week. At the end it was at 1.008.

This is the point when most people would bottle. Me? I went on holiday. I came back two weeks later, did some DIY and when I finally got into the brewery it was four weeks after dry hopping and the beer was at 1.003. Despite this it wasn't dry. It was a fruit explosion.

WLP644 doesn't follow the traditional Sacc rules. It had us all fooled because of that. I reckon you've not let it finish itself off (so to speak).

 

[trueblue]

Apples and Oranges up here in the North West, with the brewers at Buxton, Cloudwater, Thornbridge and Marble all being linked in some way (mainly having all worked at Marble) there is probably more of a mindset as to not brewing generic beer with S04/US05. Cloudwater certainly don't (currently WLP4000 and JW Lees, printed on the cans), and from this article from James Kemp (head brewer at Marble) the others don't either. Nor my local brewery RedWillow who have their own house strain. I know these previously mention brewers are all really helpful to the other local breweries, and even to us homebrewers, so maybe they all push each other along to not brew generic beer with dry yeast. In Manchester there are also brewers like Chorlton who use wild yeasts and those harvested from vintage bottles of Berlinerweisse. I can understand new startups doing it to begin with as cash flow is a big issue. Get beer out of the door then worry about setting up to manage live yeast. Although, if your bench mark is Kernel who do a good job with US05, maybe that doesn't happen.

Most established brewery's are happy to share their yeast. Around here it stems from the now defunct Ridley's brewery and the yeast is reputed to have been in continuous yeast for over 100 years. As some of the brewery's have been using it for several years or more it has adapted and changed to the extend they have registered their yeast as their own with the national yeast bank.

 

[geetee]

I have a thought on this: you might have had it too, but here goes...

When 644 Trois first appeared, it was marketed as a Brett. Now, some claim that White Labs knew it was Sacc all along and sold it as Brett to get top dollar for small cell counts. I don't care about that, because ... well, I don't care. However, it wasn't brewers that discovered it was really Sacc, it was a check on the yeast's DNA!

That means that for a long time either White Labs thought it was Brett too, or hoodwinked people (I don't but that). Why? Because Trois (644) behaves like a Brett! Interestingly, the many people who raved about it before its lineage was exposed liked that it was a 'fast' Brett.

With Sacc, you can usually allow 3 weeks primary, a week secondary with dry hopping and you're done. Treating 644 like that ignores its general behaviour, which is Brett-like (albeit fast brett-like).

Now, a Brett can take 6-12 months eating through stuff. Before we knew 644 was Sacc we were all amazed that it would be done in 6-8 weeks. Today, we know it's Sacc, but it's important to remember we all thought it was Brett because of how it behaves!

As an example, as I type this I'm drinking a 644 fermented IPA. Very nice too. I left it in primary for 5 weeks, and it dropped from 1.052 to 1.009. I then dry hopped it for a week. At the end it was at 1.008.

This is the point when most people would bottle. Me? I went on holiday. I came back two weeks later, did some DIY and when I finally got into the brewery it was four weeks after dry hopping and the beer was at 1.003. Despite this it wasn't dry. It was a fruit explosion.

WLP644 doesn't follow the traditional Sacc rules. It had us all fooled because of that. I reckon you've not let it finish itself off (so to speak).

I agree with your diagnoisis, I knew it was not a brett and from information i gleaned knew it would take a little longer however the ale I was making was for a competition in 6 weeks or so. Now I am usually a fairly fast brewer in that I usually turn my beers around in 4 weeks at most, some as little as 3 weeks. i did not want to rush this one and with my temp controlled fridge it initially dropped from 1060 to 1020 in about 5 days, a further weekend and it reached 1015 and there it stayed.

After looking for predicted attenuation and FG I "deduced" that it may finish high but I did leave it a further week, still at 1015 with rousing. Forgot to mention that I had pitched 1 vial into 25 litres at 1060 so probably should have done a starter so I left it another week, total of about 5 weeks before I turned the fridge down to 14°C for a day or so and then chilled.

It is possible that a) not making a starter didn't help and b) my usual expectations of 2 weeks were well exceeded but I did leave it for 5 weeks. It remained at 1015 for more than 2 weeks so I assumed it was done.
The first bottle opened after 12 days or so was great, the next 4-5 just completely gushed out yet the keg is lively and drinkable just total fruit

Another lesson learned, as I said in my previous post i need to"get to know my yeasts" and the moral of this story is that although the beer I still have is great and will be drunk I obviously treat this yeast just like a bog standard dried pack, from your recollections I will know better next time!
Thanks for the info!

 

[MyQul]

I don't think you will see a great difference with dried yeast. The big variety comes with liquid yeast and if you can get live brewery yeast it is on a different level. They don't spend a lot of money on yeast labs without good reason.

Do you consider yeast cultured up from bottle conditioned beer 'live brewery yeast'? The two or three I've cultured up have be really good. I've got the gales strain fermenting in a bitter at the moment and will be trying it in a week or two - I've got my high hopes for it

 

[trueblue]

Do you consider yeast cultured up from bottle conditioned beer 'live brewery yeast'? The two or three I've cultured up have be really good. I've got the gales strain fermenting in a bitter at the moment and will be trying it in a week or two - I've got my high hopes for it

I used yeast from bottles in my early years of brewing, somewhere in in the region of 15-20 years, with great results. You will always be reviving dormant cells and hopefully get to a strong viability. In that time I would say I had 5 or 6 fail. Using live brewers yeast, providing you pitch within a few days, you are pitching healthy yeast at it's prime and chomping at the bit to get to the wort. I used some a few weeks back and a 1052 went to 1012 in three days. Liquid yeast such as Whitelabs I find somewhere between the two.
I strongly recommend the yeast book to anyone how wants to make great beer not just beer. Probably the most important homebrew book around. I will admit I had to read it twice but worth it.

 

[geetee]

I used yeast from bottles in my early years of brewing, somewhere in in the region of 15-20 years, with great results. You will always be reviving dormant cells and hopefully get to a strong viability. In that time I would say I had 5 or 6 fail. Using live brewers yeast, providing you pitch within a few days, you are pitching healthy yeast at it's prime and chomping at the bit to get to the wort. I used some a few weeks back and a 1052 went to 1012 in three days. Liquid yeast such as Whitelabs I find somewhere between the two.
I strongly recommend the yeast book to anyone how wants to make great beer not just beer. Probably the most important homebrew book around. I will admit I had to read it twice but worth it.

Is that the Chris White Yeast book?
I bought it from amazon about a month or so and then remembered I had the electronic version from 2 years ago on my PC. It is certainly a good reference work and not overly scientific, however after 34 years in a lab and a Chemistry degree it was a joy to see the krebs cycle yet at last have some relevance!

It has spurred me to thinking of getting a microscope and building up my own yeasts, I covered this at Brewlab and it's not too difficult, in fact essential to determining yeast counts and viability instead of just pitching and hope for the best.

 

[trueblue]

Yes the Chris White book. If I had your chemistry knowledge I would certainly be looking at my own yeast labs.

 

[Covrich]

Can you tell me what are your favourites?

I must admit, I'm yet to be convinced by the "yeast makes a huge difference" arguement. Been homebrewing 6 years, 100+ brews, mainly British-style ales, tried a number of different yeasts but haven't been able to notice any real difference e.g. I wanted a fruity brew and tried MJ M15 Empire Ale yeast, and to me it tasted the same as S-04. The only difference I can see is that some stick to the bottom of bottles better than others.

It could of course be my taste buds, but it would be helpful if you can point me to a yeast where I'd really notice a difference in an English Ale (my staples are S-04, US-05 and Nottingham).

Sorry for the late reply, Unfortunately it means look towards the liquid variety or culturing up some from a bottle conditioned commercial variety which use a yeast similar to that style.

The liquid variety is huge you may find some finish high gravity like
1016 for example and leave sweet bready or more fruity flavours for example.

I also think if you;re doing a proper belgian ect you will typically benefit from a liquid strain... you can of course harvest and reuse them to mitigate the cost somewhat.