It’s been a long while since I have last done an experiment in home brewing and this is one I have been planning on doing for a long time. The lack of small 1 gallon fermentation units and the terrible state of the local home brew suppliers in my city have prevented me from attempting this.
Last week I found a decent online store which supplied several strains of dry beer yeast, plus a variety of well priced hops and managed to convert several 1 gallon apple juice containers into fermenters. The yeast arrived at my house last night and the rest will be history. Until now I have exculsively used Coopers beer yeast which has served me very well in producing beer. Still from my reading and research many state that the strain of yeast plays a very large role in the overall final product. I have to find out for myself…
The Question – How much does the strain of yeast affect the final flavours of a home brewed beer?
The Experiment -4 Different strains of yeast will be used for a single beer recipe which will be divided into four seperate 1 gallon fermenters.
The Recipe -Bradinator’s Red Ale
All the ingredients collected and ready to go
- 3.3 lbs Pilsner LME
- 1.0 lbs Light DME
- 1 and 1/2 cups (approx 0.5 lbs) Crystal Malt 60L (steeped for 30 minutes at 70-80c)
- 1 oz Amarillo Gold @ 60 minutes
- 0.5 oz Amarillo Gold @ 30 minutes
- 0.5 oz Amarillo Gold @ 5 minutes
- 1/2 tsp Irish Moss @ 10 minutes
- 1/2 tsp Yeast Nutrient @ Cold Break
- SafeAle-04, SafeAle-05, SafeLager S-23, SafeBrew S-33
Original Gravity: 1.038 – 1.040
The Plan – 4-6 weeks in the fermenters, then an additional 2 weeks in bottles. The final products will be refridgerated for 24 hours prior to drinking and will be sampled on an individual basis (possibly 1 a night). A final gravity reading will be taken from each individual batch as I highly expect them all ferment out differently, especially the S-33.
All the beer was divided evenly and each individual yeast packet pitched.
SafeAle S-04: Described as an English Ale yeast
SafeAle S-05 - An American ale yeast, low diacetyl production
SafeLager S-23 - A german lager yeast, supposed to impart fruit like flavours
SafeBrew S-33: A robust ale yeast with high alcohol tolerance. Used in strong ales.
I am going to need to monitor this brews over the next couple days as I pitched the entire 11.5g packet of yeast into these small fermenters. To prevent the inevitable blow out that will occur in the next day or so I have all the beers pointing into a blow-off jar filled with sanitizer.
I already know this beer will explode... It's just a matter of time.