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Liquid or Dry
What type of yeast are you using? I'm interested in what the guys from overseas are using, I've been experimenting with the dry stuff a lot lately and have found really excellent results. I'm keeping a few packets on hand now as back-ups, but I think they're getting good enough to use all the time, only downside right now is lack of selection.
I've never done liquid always dry, the cost has always kept me away with it being 2 to 3 times more expensive.
For the first couple of years I brewed, I used dry yeaast exclusively. Now I use liquid. But, I always had pretty good results with the dry. I personally wouldn't consider it big step backward to use dry again.
Once you start using liquid yeast you will never look back. Liquid yeast allows you to get so much more flavor profile out of the yeast and you can basically get your hands on almost any type of strain you could ever imagine. Dry yeast has been exposed to Oxygen more so than Liquid and this is a concern for me. If you go to basicbrewingradio.com you can download a podcast of James Spencers 3 part interview with David Logsdon of Wyeast and he really goes into great detail about the advantages of liquid yeast vs. dry yeast. It's kind of a controversial topic lately but I think Liquid blows Dry out of the water hands down.
I'd disagree. I use primarily liquid yeast and will probably continue to do so until the selection in dry yeast gets better, but as for quality, I've done 3 side by side comparisons using US-56 against the exact same batch using a liquid yeast and the results were pretty even. Some people I had try them actually preferred the dry. Sure, for selection you can't beat liquid, but I'm sure that will change, and dry yeasts have greatly improved in quality. How would exposure to oxygen hurt the yeast? We intentionally oxygenate after pitching, right?
I got good results before, and I get very good results now. But, I have a hard time attributing all differences to the type of yeasts, as I changed some of my brewing techniques at the same time I switched to liquid, as I went from a strict all extract to an extract plus adjunct brewer. While, I won't go back to dry yeast, I don't honestly think it would cause a big drop off in the quality of my beer.
I guess that it would be pretty good experiment to ferment the same wort with somewhat equivalent versions of dry and liquid yeasts. My guess is that you would get a fairly even split on a blind taste test as to which was preffered.
Keep in mind that it is in Wyeast's (who I use) best interest to push advantages of liquid over dry.
Reusing liquid yeasts also cut back on the price difference. I've just reused my first yeast and it turned out great.
I think I only use liquid yeast for the psychological reason that it is "better." I know that better is relative but since I split my yeast costs over several batches I see no reason to use dry at this point.
Good point. I only keep the dry stuff around in case something goes wrong, but it would be nice if they added more strains for dry because it is so convenient.
I use liquid almost exclusively. I like the broad selection. I still do a starter. With a good starter I typically get active fermentation in a couple of hours. When I have used dry yeast I've gotten fine beer. The fermenation seems to take much longer, like a day or so, even with a starter. This has never been a real problem, but a longer lag worries me because of the potential for bacteria or wild yeast to get a foothold.
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