Advice for recipes from 'Brew Your Own British Real Ale'

[Clint]

Interesting topic....I too wonder about using live yeast...the only thing that puts me off is the price! I can buy a variety of yeast from CML for around 80p per packet...a quick look on maltmiller white labs is £7...will I get up to 9 times better beer from the dearer yeast....?

 

[trueblue]

Interesting topic....I too wonder about using live yeast...the only thing that puts me off is the price! I can buy a variety of yeast from CML for around 80p per packet...a quick look on maltmiller white labs is £7...will I get up to 9 times better beer from the dearer yeast....?

No but you can get at least 6 brews from each whitelabs packs, I seem to remember someone on Jim's getting over 10 but I have never pushed it past 6. If you spend 5 hours producing wort why would you not want to use the best yeast you can.

 

[Dutto]

.......... If you spend 5 hours producing wort why would you not want to use the best yeast you can.

Sorry, but yeast is one of the many thousands of variables that are available to the HomeBrewer; and like the other many thousands of variables it comes down to personal taste and preferences as to which is "the best" of anything.

 

[trueblue]

Sorry, but yeast is one of the many thousands of variables that are available to the HomeBrewer; and like the other many thousands of variables it comes down to personal taste and preferences as to which is "the best" of anything.

Yeast is a lot more important than being considered just an ingredient. A good commercial brewery will alter it's hops and malt dependent on that years harvest and still produce the same beer but the better brewery's may run a lab to maintain their strain of yeast as well as registering their strain in the national collection in case they have a problem. The original post was about Timothy Taylor's beers from Graham Wheelers book and their's is very much their own strain so the chances of replicating with SO4 are about the same as me becoming prime minister. If people want to stick to dried yeast fine and they may get a reasonable beer but as long as they are not expecting it to come out exactly the same as the original without the right yeast.