Watched a Banana brewing you tube on CML and he really wasn’t complimenting it.
Can you set up a vote on here for best yeasts , would be good to see who wins .
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Was it the Kolsch V2 one? Just tracked that down. I will say though he seemed to be expecting a lager using a Kolsch yeast. So could be he just had overly high expectations.
That said, it's not easy criticising such a popular yeast, it comes with a heavy dose of feeling like the little boy announcing to the crowd that the emperor is in the altogether..... As mentioned in that vid, they're really nice lads, and you certainly can't complain about their prices. You really do need to try some different yeasts though before you judge them. It took me trying the M36 Liberty Bell to realise how poor the results I got from CML Real Ale were. The CML Real Ale yeast I get a strange after taste tainting the beer, I don't get this with the M36 at all.
I knew straight off that the Saison De Lille had under-attenuated (Electric India clone, made with pilsen malt, that we named Saison De Quirm), BUT the beer was positively delicious! The Saison With Avec I made with M29 however was even nicer still and still is, starting out as a rather delicious tropical fruit flavoured beer thanks to the mosaic dry hop, metamorphosing into one with quite a nice grapefruit, honey and lemon flavour as the mosaic dry hop has faded and the Amarillo hops and the yeast esters and honey have become more apparent, with much better attenuation.
The wheat I did, well my wife hated it, and it took way longer than most folks reckon for the banana to come through from the CML Kristallweizen yeast. I found it absolutely delicious though, a nice light easy drinking beer. I gave some to my future son in law however, and he was very underwhelmed by it, complaining that it lacked flavour... So yeah.... He'd just tasted the Saison With Avec though, a very flavour rich beer.... lol
The US Pale Ale yeast, I haven't tried an alternative yeast yet. The beers I made with it though had a sourness in the background, and literally never cleared, no matter how long they were conditioned for. I don't really do US style (deliberately) beers though to be honest, hence I haven't tried out any alternative US yeasts.
The Belgian Ale yeast, well so far I am happy with the results. It's still very early days, but my Patersbier went from 1.046/1.047 down to 1.010 in 4 days. Thing is though, I am pretty certain that it then stopped there. That's only 77.5% attenuation, which when you look at other Belgian Ale style yeasts is rather low for the style. Again though, early tasting has been nice. No trace of the banana others report though, I ended up fermenting at 24 degrees C though and it does have pleasant hints of spice in there. So far though, it's hard telling it apart from their Kristallweizen yeast, and I can't believe that that is a good thing to be honest. I racked it to secondary though to clean up, so it may find a second lease of life... If it does go banana though, like the wheat one did after a couple of weeks in the bottle, it will be getting replaced with either M41 or maybe T58 for future Belgian brews, my wife really hates banana flavour when it's not coming from an actual banana....
I haven't tried the Kolsch yeast. I have no temperature control, so have been hesitant to try brewing one. I have a packet of the yeast in the fridge.
So yeah, I have quite a lot of CML yeasts left in the fridge that won't be getting used. At some point for example I'll probably be giving away 5 packets of Real Ale yeast, as I won't be using them.
