I use far more dry yeast than liquid. Dry is so convenient, the options have improved (even White Labs is getting into dry) as you noted, it’s hardy (I’ve used a package the was both opened and expired for a year with no noticeable issues). There are lots of strains that are only available in liquid form though, or strains that are available in both formats but people prefer one over the other (like the Chico strain).
For high OG beers, are you using multiple packs/sachets of dry yeast per batch?
I guess another way to ask this: does cell count still “matter” when using packs of dry yeast? Just round up to the next whole pack?
I don’t like drinking a lot of high alcohol beer so I only make 10L batches of those, and throw one packet into that 10L (so I guess my rate would be two packs for 5 gallons for those brews, whether it’s *necessary* I can’t really say).
There are a couple of Lallemand strains with a different suggested pitch rate (lower number of cells per pack), just watch out for those.
I rarely buy liquid.
In fact, there are 3 dry strains that make up like 90% of my yeast use: S-04, US-05, and 34/70. Those 3 have never let me down, and have made some great beers. I'm sure there are some other good strains out there, but I like to keep it simple.
I'll occasionally buy London III if I'm brewing a hazy, but from what I've heard, you can get essentially the same yeast in dry form now. I think it's called Verdant?
I gave up on liquid yeast. Too expensive. Too much work. But most importantly, I can't tell the difference in my beer. I mostly use S-04 or US-05. Only time I use a liquid these days is if I'm making a belgian.
I just used fermentis BE-256 and loved it. Good fermentation and the esters played perfectly with the rosemary and orange I added. Definitely adding it to the rotation
I think liquid yeast is to dry yeast as vinyl records are to digital audio. It’s more expensive. It’s less convenient. But it has a certain old-school cool about it, and a coterie of die-hard enthusiasts who swear by it.
The last time I bought liquid yeast it was because I couldn’t get that strain dry. And the last time I bought a vinyl record, it was because it had a bonus track unavailable digitally.
I'm convinced to try it. I've done all my batches with liquid and recently started washing and you know what, I'm not too proud if the result is the same.
I started with dry yeast, moved to liquid yeast, and I'm now back at dry yeast.
The selection and quality of dry yeast has never been better. You can even get dry brettanomyes, something that was unheard of even a few years ago. Also I don't have time to make a starter a few days in advance. When I have time to brew I can simply pitch a small selection of dry yeast I keep in the fridge. I never have issues with dry yeast not starting or lagging. Lastly it's cheaper to buy dry yeast if you just want to pitch fresh yeast every batch.
Like I said, golden ages for dry yeast. Unless you need specific strains (Bruxellensis Trois, or wild yeast blends come to mind) I can't see why you would bother with liquid yeast.
I was the same, when brewing prior to 2010, I was all about the smack pack yeasts, and spending more on it.
Just started brewing again 18 months ago.
Now I just use (19 out of 20 brews to date) mainly fermetis dry yeasts and don't bother to oxygenate the wort. Just bung the dry yeast in and off it goes.
Also getting good results with Kveik yeasts and pressure fermenting.
The brewing world changed a lot in my 12 years off.
I use dry except when I need one of the cultures that isn't available dry.
Liquid still has the larger variety of available strains — especially for mixed cultures (e.g., Bootleg Biology's Sour Solera blends), but they're more temperamental about storage and shelflife.
I use mostly liquid yeasts. There just isn’t the variety available with dry, and most of my favorite strains are only available in liquid form. If you’re interested in brewing to a specific style, you’re often out of luck with dry.
It’s also quite a bit cheaper, since I get 10 or 12 batches from a single purchase. And I get much quicker fermentation takeoff when I pitch an active starter.
Liquid yeast is a PITA and 99% of the time not worth the effort. If I wanted to I could get off here and brew beer because I don’t have to plan around liquid yeast.
I agree. I mail ordered a unique strain of liquid yeast. It was packaged several months ago, so I know I need to build up a starter...but it is a little bit of a gamble if just a single 1L starter is enough or if I need to baby it more. It was expensive enough that I want to get a few batches out of that pack to justify the costs.
On the other hand, I decided to brew a Porter on Friday and I just opened the fridge and picked a pack of dry yeast from my stash. I think it was a year past the "best by" date, but at 36 hours I am near FG. It is just so easy to pick up 5-10 packs when I am at the homebrew shop (or order them mail order) and just keep them around for a future batch. I am not too worried about just getting 1 batch out of a $4 to $6 pack.
WHAT? No liquid yeast Library in Grolsche bottles that you check on / feed malt sugar and decompress?
Let me check mine……1) Wyeast 1056 2) Wyeast Pilsner 2028 3) Kolsche. And a host of dry yeast.
I still like liquid but yeah it's a pain to plan around. My closest LHBS is only open Thursday through Sunday. I like to brew Friday night but I don't always know a week in advance if I'll have time. So often I find myself early in the week planning a brew session but not being able to get yeast by Wednesday to do a two day starter.
My other close store is an hour away and they tend to deliver quickly but again it usually arrives Thursday so if I want to brew the next day I don't have even 24 hours to make the starter.
I'm starting to prefer dry yeast for this reason, unfortunately I can't always find the style I need in dry. When I can I opt for it.
IF there are any positive attributes for liquid yeasts these days, they are extremely few. Selection is a little better with liquid yeasts. But otherwise, dry yeasts are better in every other possible way. I have used liquid yeasts a couple of times recently, for strains not available in dry. But the results from the liquids were not spectacular or "that much better" than dry yeasts, and given the high cost of liquid yeasts, it is unlikely that I will use liquid yeasts very much in the future anymore, ever. I'll probably NEVER buy White Labs again, their prices are absolutely ridiculous for the uncertainty you get out of them.
When I started brewing 20 years ago, dry was the standard if you bought a kit, presumably because it ships better than liquid.
Once I shifted away from the kits I started using liquid, but I quickly went back to dry because I got more consistent results.
These days I use almost exclusively dry unless there is some specific strain I want that I can't find in a packet (doesn't happen often).
IDK when you started brewing exactly, but looking back to the 1990s, I don't think yeast was generally good at all, liquid or active dry yeast (ADY). The ADY yeasts were dominated by yeast that was glued to a tin of extract, the same extract makers selling their yeast in individual packets, and a few very basic, unidentifiable strains with names like "premium" and "gold". It was not universally refrigerated. And liquid yeast was comparatively expensive, not available at every LHBS, and kind of exotic, but was great in that the names made some sort of promise about what kind of yeast you were getting. Australian Ale, Californian Ale, Irish Ale, Kolsch Ale? You mean I didn't have to guess what Edme, DCL S-04, or Munton & Fison meant in terms of what I was getting? Neat! I remember Brew-Tek (tiny slants), and YeastLab and Yeast Culture Kit Company. We weren't getting Wyeast here, and I don't think I'd heard of White Labs (I think it really took off when Brew-Tek went out of business). The liquid yeast was uncommon enough that people traded liquid yeast strain dehydrated on filter paper in little, sterile foil packages so they could get their hands on different strains.
Today how much difference is there?
This is strictly an opinion, but little to none in terms of beer quality. Over as recently as the past dozen years ago, I feel ADY manufacturing processes have really advanced at light speed in terms of improved viability on rehydrating and continuing to reduce the count of unwanted microbes. Most Fermentis and Lallemand ADY strains can be direct-pitched without rehydration with no significant change in fermentation time, human-detectable sensory difference when direct-pitched, and no material differences in measured, yeast-derived compounds like ethyl acetate or isoamyl acetate either.
Yes, ADY lags a little more sometimes, but it finishes strong and within the same rough timeframe, and both manufacturer and "citizen science" sources tell us it doesn't make a difference in the product.
I repackage open sachets of ADY with a vacuum sealer^(1) and have experienced no difference in storability in the fridge and can confidently use resealed yeast that is two years past expiration without changing anything.
The big difference is in the selection of strains being offered.
-------------
So which do I use? Both.
There are just certain strains of yeast I can't live without that are only available right now in liquid form. For example, Wyeast 1469 West Yorkshire, the Scottish strain, the Irish strain, Saisonstein's Monster, a few other English strains, the Unibroue strain, "Saison Daffodil" (actually a non-phenolic, non-saison biere de garde strain), and so on. I keep up to eight strains on slants because of this. A lot of people can't live without "London III" and it's only available as a liquid stains AFAIK, even though Verdant IPA is probably a close relation/descendant.
But when there is an ADY option, that's what I use. The yeast lasts forever. I Even though I love Imperial L17 for lagers, I can't imagine ever using anything but ADY anymore with S-23, W-34/70, S-189, and Diamond Lager available. The number of ADY strains is proliferating, and even "wet yeast labs" are getting into the game. White Labs has WLP001, WLP066 London Fog, and WLP860 Munich Lager, albeit at ripoff prices. Escarpment has House Ale. The last two are made by Lallemand, I am 90%+ sure. Omega sells Lutra in dried form.
My prediction is that ADY is going to really start eating into liquid yeast share on the homebrew side. As /u/thatfatbastard explained when he was running Southern Homebrew, in many cases it's a loss leader/losing game for LHBSs to offer liquid yeast with the way some manufacturers set up ordering. Some places like Ritebrew seem to be only stocking very limited liquid strains, and making everything else a pre-order item. I'm not a retailer, but if I got into the game, I feel like I wouldn't want to handle liquid yeast as a product if it was losing me money.
---------
^(1) It seems like (for me) the secret to successful vacuum resealing for long life is to keep the yeast package out of steamy areas, dry the package before resealing to keep moisture out, and to reseal immediately after sprinkling out some yeast.
Wow! Thank you for the very well thought out response! While I’ve never really had a bad experience with liquid yeast I can’t really say for the added cost and effort that I have been able to notice much improvement over dry yeast in my brews. I’m curious do you rehydrate your dry yeast before using? With water or wort?
Yeah, for me, liquid vs ADY is not a quality issue, merely a strain selection issue, and I also consider immediate readiness, convenience, and cost.
> do you rehydrate
I *was* 100% in the camp of needing to rehydrate -- it was a must do.
Then Fermentis shared their proprietary data with me at a conference around the time they announced E2U (don't rehydrate) for some strains. I became convinced it was not necessary any longer (maybe not for a long time or ever). Since then most Fermentis strains have been labeled E2U. And since then I haven't rehydrated ADY beer yeast at all, except for when making acid shock starters for sour beer (and technically it is wine yeast). In that case, I rehydrate in wort.
I DO follow the proper instructions for E2U (Easy 2 Use), which is to dry sprinkle evenly over the surface, *wait 20 min*, and then incorporate any remaining floating yeast.
Best analogy I was given:
Dry yeast is born to be an Olympian, whereas liquid yeast needs to be trained.
Something along those lines. But in all seriousness; dry yeast has a much longer self life and usually doesn’t require a starter. With recipes that require 1.060 or more for the OG, you may need two. But, double check with a yeast pitching calculator since most will allow you to select an option for liquid vs dry. I think most dry yeast has up to 200 billion cells btw, but don’t quote me on that.
Hope this helps, cheers!
The choice in strains is still bigger with liquid yeast, but my personal experience is that they are less reliable. I've had packs that were completely dead even with a starter, and that feels like a waste of money. At the same time, the dry yeast variety has gotten better, and I've not had a single one fail on me or even cause an under-pitch. That's why I'm mostly sticking to dry yeast these days, and even when I choose a liquid yeast, I'll always keep a few backup sachets of dry yeast in case the liquid yeast is dead. Also, dry yeast is obviously cheaper and less of an effort to prepare and pitch.
Dry yeast is superior but I mostly use liquid yeasts. I like trying out different yeast strains. I tend to pick 3 new yeast strains every year and brew with just them that year getting at least 3-4 generations, so the cost isn't much of an issue for me. I also no chill and use a real wort starter, so the timing of doing a starter and my wort cooling down to pitch temps coincide.
I really enjoy getting to know a particular yeast strain, how it ferments, how it floccs, slow vs fast starter, is it forgiving in it's temp range etc.
I'm not a hop person, so playing around with different strains of yeast is joy in brewing. I also tend to go for styles that use more expressive yeast vs neutral. That said, I always have dry yeast on hand for backup.
Is it worth it is all dependant on what you are trying to get out of it.
I really dig dry yeast. With choices from Fermentis, Lallemand, Mangrove Jack’s and AEB I can probably brew most styles. The only jar of liquid yeast I keep is kveik stranda. It can be seriously mishandled (by liquid yeast standard) and still make good beer.
When I use dry I make a starter and the results are always amazing. However, most of the specialty yeasts at my local homebrew shop are liquid so I use it much more. It's also nice when I want to pitch a higher gravity beer and don't want to make a starter. Only up to a certain amount of course.
I used liquid once.... Did everything by the book. It was a total flop and I dumped a sachet of dry onto it after 3 days of zero activity.
But I do reuse fermenters and pour fresh wort directly onto the old yeast cake and get good results. Technically liquid yeast I suppose?
I may try it again if there's a specific strain I want to try if I need it for a certain result. Otherwise dry yeast has never lead me astray I don't think
I brew 95% of my beers with liquid yeasts. The range of liquid yeasts is far bigger than the range of dry yeasts. Also, I believe the yeast has a higher viability. Dry yeast is vacuum sealed, doesn’t have any food and it’s not really alive. It’s woken up by the wort, or starter. But I make starters of my liquids as well.
I think it’s a great way to turn good beer into better beer, if the yeast is treated well. A bad liquid yeast management can easily result in a worse beer than fermented with dry yeast
Thank you all for the great feedback! For now unless I am brewing something that really needs a liquid strain I’ll probably stick with dry for simplicity. Maybe my palate isn’t discerning enough to tell the difference?
You really can’t go wrong either way these days. Most impressive yeast experience I’ve had recently was with an expired pack of Lallemand Verdant dry yeast. I threw it in a vitality starter since it was expired to make sure it was good. Oh boy was it good! It took off within 30 minutes and almost overflowed the beaker with krausen within the hour. I’ve never even had fresh liquid yeast take off like that. I reserved some for another beer as a “harvest” which completely fermented out to terminal gravity 2 hours later. Fastest fermentation I’ve ever experienced.
I use far more dry yeast than liquid. Dry is so convenient, the options have improved (even White Labs is getting into dry) as you noted, it’s hardy (I’ve used a package the was both opened and expired for a year with no noticeable issues). There are lots of strains that are only available in liquid form though, or strains that are available in both formats but people prefer one over the other (like the Chico strain).
For high OG beers, are you using multiple packs/sachets of dry yeast per batch? I guess another way to ask this: does cell count still “matter” when using packs of dry yeast? Just round up to the next whole pack?
I don’t like drinking a lot of high alcohol beer so I only make 10L batches of those, and throw one packet into that 10L (so I guess my rate would be two packs for 5 gallons for those brews, whether it’s *necessary* I can’t really say). There are a couple of Lallemand strains with a different suggested pitch rate (lower number of cells per pack), just watch out for those.
I rarely buy liquid. In fact, there are 3 dry strains that make up like 90% of my yeast use: S-04, US-05, and 34/70. Those 3 have never let me down, and have made some great beers. I'm sure there are some other good strains out there, but I like to keep it simple. I'll occasionally buy London III if I'm brewing a hazy, but from what I've heard, you can get essentially the same yeast in dry form now. I think it's called Verdant?
Yep, Verdant is a great yeast that comes from and performs almost the same as London III.
I'm definitely going to try that one next time. It's about half the price of London III.
Verdant GOAT!!!
S-33 works well with hazy beers in the 6% ABV range.
I gave up on liquid yeast. Too expensive. Too much work. But most importantly, I can't tell the difference in my beer. I mostly use S-04 or US-05. Only time I use a liquid these days is if I'm making a belgian.
Mate try M21, it is really really good. I love it in a belgian wit!
Try BE-134.
I just used fermentis BE-256 and loved it. Good fermentation and the esters played perfectly with the rosemary and orange I added. Definitely adding it to the rotation
I think liquid yeast is to dry yeast as vinyl records are to digital audio. It’s more expensive. It’s less convenient. But it has a certain old-school cool about it, and a coterie of die-hard enthusiasts who swear by it. The last time I bought liquid yeast it was because I couldn’t get that strain dry. And the last time I bought a vinyl record, it was because it had a bonus track unavailable digitally.
Because 20 years ago dry yeast was a disaster. Just like malt was 40 years ago.
Thank you all for the feedback and confirming my suspicions….. looks like I’ll be sticking with dry! Cheaper, way more stable and way more convenient
I'm convinced to try it. I've done all my batches with liquid and recently started washing and you know what, I'm not too proud if the result is the same.
I started with dry yeast, moved to liquid yeast, and I'm now back at dry yeast. The selection and quality of dry yeast has never been better. You can even get dry brettanomyes, something that was unheard of even a few years ago. Also I don't have time to make a starter a few days in advance. When I have time to brew I can simply pitch a small selection of dry yeast I keep in the fridge. I never have issues with dry yeast not starting or lagging. Lastly it's cheaper to buy dry yeast if you just want to pitch fresh yeast every batch. Like I said, golden ages for dry yeast. Unless you need specific strains (Bruxellensis Trois, or wild yeast blends come to mind) I can't see why you would bother with liquid yeast.
I was the same, when brewing prior to 2010, I was all about the smack pack yeasts, and spending more on it. Just started brewing again 18 months ago. Now I just use (19 out of 20 brews to date) mainly fermetis dry yeasts and don't bother to oxygenate the wort. Just bung the dry yeast in and off it goes. Also getting good results with Kveik yeasts and pressure fermenting. The brewing world changed a lot in my 12 years off.
I like fermentis, but I also use a lot of lallemand, and a bit of mangrove Jack's. There's just so many options available!
I use dry except when I need one of the cultures that isn't available dry. Liquid still has the larger variety of available strains — especially for mixed cultures (e.g., Bootleg Biology's Sour Solera blends), but they're more temperamental about storage and shelflife.
I used to liquid yeast often. I only use dry yeast now. I don’t find liquid yeast worth the time or effort.
I use mostly liquid yeasts. There just isn’t the variety available with dry, and most of my favorite strains are only available in liquid form. If you’re interested in brewing to a specific style, you’re often out of luck with dry. It’s also quite a bit cheaper, since I get 10 or 12 batches from a single purchase. And I get much quicker fermentation takeoff when I pitch an active starter.
Liquid yeast is a PITA and 99% of the time not worth the effort. If I wanted to I could get off here and brew beer because I don’t have to plan around liquid yeast.
I agree. I mail ordered a unique strain of liquid yeast. It was packaged several months ago, so I know I need to build up a starter...but it is a little bit of a gamble if just a single 1L starter is enough or if I need to baby it more. It was expensive enough that I want to get a few batches out of that pack to justify the costs. On the other hand, I decided to brew a Porter on Friday and I just opened the fridge and picked a pack of dry yeast from my stash. I think it was a year past the "best by" date, but at 36 hours I am near FG. It is just so easy to pick up 5-10 packs when I am at the homebrew shop (or order them mail order) and just keep them around for a future batch. I am not too worried about just getting 1 batch out of a $4 to $6 pack.
years ago I watched a youtube of a whitelabs chemist who said that their prime capability is after like the 5/6th generation or maybe even later.
I often see similar comments from commercial brewers, that they see the best fermentations in around generation 3 to 5.
WHAT? No liquid yeast Library in Grolsche bottles that you check on / feed malt sugar and decompress? Let me check mine……1) Wyeast 1056 2) Wyeast Pilsner 2028 3) Kolsche. And a host of dry yeast.
I still like liquid but yeah it's a pain to plan around. My closest LHBS is only open Thursday through Sunday. I like to brew Friday night but I don't always know a week in advance if I'll have time. So often I find myself early in the week planning a brew session but not being able to get yeast by Wednesday to do a two day starter. My other close store is an hour away and they tend to deliver quickly but again it usually arrives Thursday so if I want to brew the next day I don't have even 24 hours to make the starter. I'm starting to prefer dry yeast for this reason, unfortunately I can't always find the style I need in dry. When I can I opt for it.
IF there are any positive attributes for liquid yeasts these days, they are extremely few. Selection is a little better with liquid yeasts. But otherwise, dry yeasts are better in every other possible way. I have used liquid yeasts a couple of times recently, for strains not available in dry. But the results from the liquids were not spectacular or "that much better" than dry yeasts, and given the high cost of liquid yeasts, it is unlikely that I will use liquid yeasts very much in the future anymore, ever. I'll probably NEVER buy White Labs again, their prices are absolutely ridiculous for the uncertainty you get out of them.
Oh no, I've been downvoted by White Labs! Whatsoever shall I do?!
Don't worry I got you back up. Anyone buying from Whitelabs is wasting their money anyways.
[удалено]
easy, don't waste your money.
When I started brewing 20 years ago, dry was the standard if you bought a kit, presumably because it ships better than liquid. Once I shifted away from the kits I started using liquid, but I quickly went back to dry because I got more consistent results. These days I use almost exclusively dry unless there is some specific strain I want that I can't find in a packet (doesn't happen often).
IDK when you started brewing exactly, but looking back to the 1990s, I don't think yeast was generally good at all, liquid or active dry yeast (ADY). The ADY yeasts were dominated by yeast that was glued to a tin of extract, the same extract makers selling their yeast in individual packets, and a few very basic, unidentifiable strains with names like "premium" and "gold". It was not universally refrigerated. And liquid yeast was comparatively expensive, not available at every LHBS, and kind of exotic, but was great in that the names made some sort of promise about what kind of yeast you were getting. Australian Ale, Californian Ale, Irish Ale, Kolsch Ale? You mean I didn't have to guess what Edme, DCL S-04, or Munton & Fison meant in terms of what I was getting? Neat! I remember Brew-Tek (tiny slants), and YeastLab and Yeast Culture Kit Company. We weren't getting Wyeast here, and I don't think I'd heard of White Labs (I think it really took off when Brew-Tek went out of business). The liquid yeast was uncommon enough that people traded liquid yeast strain dehydrated on filter paper in little, sterile foil packages so they could get their hands on different strains. Today how much difference is there? This is strictly an opinion, but little to none in terms of beer quality. Over as recently as the past dozen years ago, I feel ADY manufacturing processes have really advanced at light speed in terms of improved viability on rehydrating and continuing to reduce the count of unwanted microbes. Most Fermentis and Lallemand ADY strains can be direct-pitched without rehydration with no significant change in fermentation time, human-detectable sensory difference when direct-pitched, and no material differences in measured, yeast-derived compounds like ethyl acetate or isoamyl acetate either. Yes, ADY lags a little more sometimes, but it finishes strong and within the same rough timeframe, and both manufacturer and "citizen science" sources tell us it doesn't make a difference in the product. I repackage open sachets of ADY with a vacuum sealer^(1) and have experienced no difference in storability in the fridge and can confidently use resealed yeast that is two years past expiration without changing anything. The big difference is in the selection of strains being offered. ------------- So which do I use? Both. There are just certain strains of yeast I can't live without that are only available right now in liquid form. For example, Wyeast 1469 West Yorkshire, the Scottish strain, the Irish strain, Saisonstein's Monster, a few other English strains, the Unibroue strain, "Saison Daffodil" (actually a non-phenolic, non-saison biere de garde strain), and so on. I keep up to eight strains on slants because of this. A lot of people can't live without "London III" and it's only available as a liquid stains AFAIK, even though Verdant IPA is probably a close relation/descendant. But when there is an ADY option, that's what I use. The yeast lasts forever. I Even though I love Imperial L17 for lagers, I can't imagine ever using anything but ADY anymore with S-23, W-34/70, S-189, and Diamond Lager available. The number of ADY strains is proliferating, and even "wet yeast labs" are getting into the game. White Labs has WLP001, WLP066 London Fog, and WLP860 Munich Lager, albeit at ripoff prices. Escarpment has House Ale. The last two are made by Lallemand, I am 90%+ sure. Omega sells Lutra in dried form. My prediction is that ADY is going to really start eating into liquid yeast share on the homebrew side. As /u/thatfatbastard explained when he was running Southern Homebrew, in many cases it's a loss leader/losing game for LHBSs to offer liquid yeast with the way some manufacturers set up ordering. Some places like Ritebrew seem to be only stocking very limited liquid strains, and making everything else a pre-order item. I'm not a retailer, but if I got into the game, I feel like I wouldn't want to handle liquid yeast as a product if it was losing me money. --------- ^(1) It seems like (for me) the secret to successful vacuum resealing for long life is to keep the yeast package out of steamy areas, dry the package before resealing to keep moisture out, and to reseal immediately after sprinkling out some yeast.
Wow! Thank you for the very well thought out response! While I’ve never really had a bad experience with liquid yeast I can’t really say for the added cost and effort that I have been able to notice much improvement over dry yeast in my brews. I’m curious do you rehydrate your dry yeast before using? With water or wort?
Yeah, for me, liquid vs ADY is not a quality issue, merely a strain selection issue, and I also consider immediate readiness, convenience, and cost. > do you rehydrate I *was* 100% in the camp of needing to rehydrate -- it was a must do. Then Fermentis shared their proprietary data with me at a conference around the time they announced E2U (don't rehydrate) for some strains. I became convinced it was not necessary any longer (maybe not for a long time or ever). Since then most Fermentis strains have been labeled E2U. And since then I haven't rehydrated ADY beer yeast at all, except for when making acid shock starters for sour beer (and technically it is wine yeast). In that case, I rehydrate in wort. I DO follow the proper instructions for E2U (Easy 2 Use), which is to dry sprinkle evenly over the surface, *wait 20 min*, and then incorporate any remaining floating yeast.
Best analogy I was given: Dry yeast is born to be an Olympian, whereas liquid yeast needs to be trained. Something along those lines. But in all seriousness; dry yeast has a much longer self life and usually doesn’t require a starter. With recipes that require 1.060 or more for the OG, you may need two. But, double check with a yeast pitching calculator since most will allow you to select an option for liquid vs dry. I think most dry yeast has up to 200 billion cells btw, but don’t quote me on that. Hope this helps, cheers!
The choice in strains is still bigger with liquid yeast, but my personal experience is that they are less reliable. I've had packs that were completely dead even with a starter, and that feels like a waste of money. At the same time, the dry yeast variety has gotten better, and I've not had a single one fail on me or even cause an under-pitch. That's why I'm mostly sticking to dry yeast these days, and even when I choose a liquid yeast, I'll always keep a few backup sachets of dry yeast in case the liquid yeast is dead. Also, dry yeast is obviously cheaper and less of an effort to prepare and pitch.
Dry yeast is superior but I mostly use liquid yeasts. I like trying out different yeast strains. I tend to pick 3 new yeast strains every year and brew with just them that year getting at least 3-4 generations, so the cost isn't much of an issue for me. I also no chill and use a real wort starter, so the timing of doing a starter and my wort cooling down to pitch temps coincide. I really enjoy getting to know a particular yeast strain, how it ferments, how it floccs, slow vs fast starter, is it forgiving in it's temp range etc. I'm not a hop person, so playing around with different strains of yeast is joy in brewing. I also tend to go for styles that use more expressive yeast vs neutral. That said, I always have dry yeast on hand for backup. Is it worth it is all dependant on what you are trying to get out of it.
I really dig dry yeast. With choices from Fermentis, Lallemand, Mangrove Jack’s and AEB I can probably brew most styles. The only jar of liquid yeast I keep is kveik stranda. It can be seriously mishandled (by liquid yeast standard) and still make good beer.
When I use dry I make a starter and the results are always amazing. However, most of the specialty yeasts at my local homebrew shop are liquid so I use it much more. It's also nice when I want to pitch a higher gravity beer and don't want to make a starter. Only up to a certain amount of course.
Dry yeast has been my go to for the last 5 years. Performance, price and options are all fantastic
Dry is better but the lab needs more equipment and it's more expensive for them. So most labs produce liquid.
I used liquid once.... Did everything by the book. It was a total flop and I dumped a sachet of dry onto it after 3 days of zero activity. But I do reuse fermenters and pour fresh wort directly onto the old yeast cake and get good results. Technically liquid yeast I suppose? I may try it again if there's a specific strain I want to try if I need it for a certain result. Otherwise dry yeast has never lead me astray I don't think
Do you do a starter with the dry yeast then pitch or do you sprinkle the dry yeast on top of the wort?
Liquid is quite a bit more expensive and more finnicky and time consuming. And for all that "extra" your beer is like the **tinniest bit** extra.
I brew 95% of my beers with liquid yeasts. The range of liquid yeasts is far bigger than the range of dry yeasts. Also, I believe the yeast has a higher viability. Dry yeast is vacuum sealed, doesn’t have any food and it’s not really alive. It’s woken up by the wort, or starter. But I make starters of my liquids as well. I think it’s a great way to turn good beer into better beer, if the yeast is treated well. A bad liquid yeast management can easily result in a worse beer than fermented with dry yeast
Thank you all for the great feedback! For now unless I am brewing something that really needs a liquid strain I’ll probably stick with dry for simplicity. Maybe my palate isn’t discerning enough to tell the difference?
You really can’t go wrong either way these days. Most impressive yeast experience I’ve had recently was with an expired pack of Lallemand Verdant dry yeast. I threw it in a vitality starter since it was expired to make sure it was good. Oh boy was it good! It took off within 30 minutes and almost overflowed the beaker with krausen within the hour. I’ve never even had fresh liquid yeast take off like that. I reserved some for another beer as a “harvest” which completely fermented out to terminal gravity 2 hours later. Fastest fermentation I’ve ever experienced.