My New Yeast Experiment

[rendo]

NDH,

Keep it alive mate....good work. I am hanging out for your results....

Thanks!

Rendo

I've just done something very similar in terms of a side by side test of Coopers kit yeast and US-05. I'm doing a couple of Coopers Traditional Draughts, I've been told the Thomas Coopers range have quite a good yeast under the lid anyway.

Did one 8lt boil of Ringwood and Nelson Sauvin with a can of light malt and split it between the two fermenters then topped up with a can of Draught in each and pitched yeasts at almost identical temps.

Funnily I didn't bother proofing yeasts this time and as a result the US-05 is bubbling away nicely and formed a good Krausen while the kit yeast has done neither. Only pitched yesterday arvo so going to give it a little while before taking a SG but I will laugh if the 'hardy tolerant' kit is a dud and the US-05 survives considering my lack of temp control.

They're sitting at 20 degrees in an 18 degree room so pretty well bang on. Pitched at around 25 degrees which seems to be the go with kit yeasts to liven them up.

If Digger has had a change of heart I wont thieve his thread but if he has spat the chewy I'm happy to keep you posted on the results. Should be interesting to see if the extra few bucks a brew for US-05 is worth it.

 

[NDH]

Well its nearly been a week (yeast pitched 25th), fermenting around the 18-20 degree mark which I'm happy with.

The Coopers yeast took a good 24hrs to fire up but got there eventually with an SG of 1010 today and no krausen. Apparently a pretty quick yeast.

US-05 on the other hand found the sugars straight away and was bubbling with a krausen formed within a couple of hours. SG today of 1012 and still a fair bit of bubbles on the surface so I'm guessing its not finished.

Both similar colour, both similar nose though the hops are a little more apparent in the US-05. TBH they taste bloody similar, the one with the US-05 has much more hop profile but no drier finish. As i split the boil between the 2 fermenters I missed the strainer a bit in the US-05 fermenter and lost some hops dregs which may well be the cause of the hop flavour but appart from that its a dead heat at this stage.

Now before the more experienced guys lurking around these parts read this and jump down my throat I appreciate the fact that the US-05 hasn't finished and they are warm and flat. I am reserving judgement until they are cold and carbed up but I will try and keep conditions as similar as possible to reduce the variables and report back.

Cheers

NDH

 

[mrmatt]

funny i was expecting the coopers to take longer due to initial yeast count ie 15g to 7g in the dry packets.

 

[NDH]

Well bottled today,

The yeast cake on the US-05 was nice and firm and the beer cleared just nicely.
Nice floral smell and a fruity citrus taste. Also very crisp flavour, almost dry even

The kit yeast didn't sink out as well as the US-05 but I don't particularly mind cloudy beers.
Much more malty flavour not as clean and the hops just arent as prevelant.

All in all, massive difference in flavour from the kit, not to say its a bad flavour, just the kit isn't as much to my personal taste.

I've only recently made the move to different yeasts and only done a couple of brews with US-05 and I'm happy with them thus far. I dont particularly like paying $5 each brew however for a packet so I'm going to start looking into cleaning and culturing to minimise the cost and add to the whole brewing experience.

NDH