My 2c...
I think its not a Dry vs Liquid yeast issue. I think it has more to do with pitching rates and lag time. The fact that dried yeast has to re-hydrate in the sugary wort and then get going vs liquids up-and-go I think plays a bigger part.
I've made some good beers with both liquid and dry. I find if you hydrate the dry in some boiled and cooled water (I just use water that's left over in the tea kettle), it makes dry comparable to liquid.
Agree with the pitching rate viewpoint.
My last beer I made a starter with the US-05 as it was fairly old (though still in a fridge), and I wanted to get decent viabile numbers up prior to pitching into the APA wort I had made. I think it worked very well, with a nice clean, hop forward flavour in the beer as I was expecting.
I think the most important aspect of brewing is pitching enough yeast. I am of the opinion that the lack of reliable testing to understand how much viable yeast we are pitching at the homebrew level means that people apportion blame of off tastes, or requirement to have 1 week primary, 2 week secondary, 3 weeks bottle condition (the motto for some american forums) is due to insufficient yeast pitching.
For your next few brews, take what you would normally pitch for your yeast, and double it and see if you taste an improvement in your beers. Commercial breweries pitch straight after primary a far higher rate than we do, and this is not just for reducing lag times (an active starter will give you a quick start to primary ferment), but also for getting a "clean" flavour straight after primary is complete.
Rant over and sorry to take it off topic. Dry, liquid, doesn't matter, just pitch the right amount.
1318 is my yeast of choice.. top cropping is too easy to preserve top quality ale yeast.
Cheers
:icon_chickcheers: