Yeast for dry hopped pale ale

Gary C.

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What's a good yeast for a low IBU dry-hopped pale ale?
 
2nd that ^^^^ nice clean fermenting Chico ale yeast or that dry English ale wlp007
 
Safale S-04 works nicely if you don't want the hassle of a starter. Rehydrate, though.
 
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US05 is good. I have recently started using Vermont in my pale ales and IPAs. Seems to help bring out the flavors in my citrusy hops.
 
No, you don't. Kills half of your cells if you don't but if that's not important to you, don't rehydrate.
Now wait...Everything I've run across indicates the exact opposite. How could subjecting yeast to (filtered or bottled) water kill them? Especially when there's nutrient mixed in as it is in dry yeast. Clorine might have an effect, but it shouldn't be there, anyway.
My experience is that rehydration results in shorter lag and more robust fermentation. Evidence as to whether there's any significant advantage to be had isn't overwhelming, but I definitely doubt that there a 1/2-pitch disadvantage, either. Here's a good Brulosophy: http://brulosophy.com/2014/09/15/sprinkled-vs-rehydrated-dry-yeast-exbeeriment-results/
My thinking is: sprinkle if you have to, rehydrate if you can. You'll make beer either way.
The other consideration is that if you're using a carboy, it's impossible to sprinkle the yeast and when I've tried to add it directly from the packet, I end up with part of it sticking to the neck of the carboy.
 
Yup. I get carboy neck too. I did watch of a friend of mine pitch a packet of yeast for me into the carboy. I said as a joke not to get any on the neck, because it’s unavoidable, right? He didn’t leave any yeast on the neck of the carboy, not a single grain. I have no idea how he did that!!
 
Yeast choice is a personal thing , think of it like a flavour toolbox .
When i'm designing a beer i work backwards from what i want in the glass .
different strain will give you a different result but my personal preference for a clean dry finishing hoppy ale has to be 1272
Drops clear quickly and throws mild esters that compliment my preferred citrus/fruity hops .
i use 1469 on my malty ales and i can dial in my esters with temp / pitching rates
i have the chico strain here but don't use it since it's a bit like a Toyota ( cheap ,reliable but boring )

I won't even get involved in the rehydrate argument , i was told by a biochemist to do it so i just did it .
 
Not re-hydrating works but for me it gives me six extra hours of worrying if my brew will be ok. I'm newbie enough to worry about just about all of my processes. When I take all of the effort to make a brew and the cost to buy new yeast each time, again to cut out newb errors, I will re-hydrate now every time. It only adds a few minutes to my brewday but shortens my worry time.

As far as yeast is concerned I would say don't copy me, that is change lots of stuff from brew to brew and expect to know what caused what lol. 3 different yeasts on the past three brews, with different ingredients, mash times etc. Sorry not much help, haha!
 
Yeast choice is a personal thing , think of it like a flavour toolbox .
When i'm designing a beer i work backwards from what i want in the glass .
different strain will give you a different result but my personal preference for a clean dry finishing hoppy ale has to be 1272
Drops clear quickly and throws mild esters that compliment my preferred citrus/fruity hops .
i use 1469 on my malty ales and i can dial in my esters with temp / pitching rates
i have the chico strain here but don't use it since it's a bit like a Toyota ( cheap ,reliable but boring )

I won't even get involved in the rehydrate argument , i was told by a biochemist to do it so i just did it .
I was told by a lot of biochemists, experts and pro brewers to do it, so I do it. Good yeast health has a greater impact on finished beer than the recipe. That said, the original question had to do with what yeast to use and we've answered it with great confidence, myself included, when the brewer never once told us the outcome he desired. A low IBU dry-hopped pale ale is a pretty vague description: What kind of beer do you (the OP) really want to make?
 
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I was told by a lot of biochemists, experts and pro brewers to do it, so I do it. Good yeast health has a greater impact on finished beer than the recipe.
So you DO rehydrate because NOT rehydrating kills half the yeast, right? There were too many negatives to follow in the post I responded to earlier.
 
When I used dry yeast I did rehydrate, no extra effort really and helped ensure a clean ferment .
I know a brewer who always dry pitched but wanted to see difference with a healthy starter before investing in equipment .
My supplied starter started and finished quicker and was clearer in fermentor and the glass than his usual pitch of dry us-05 and allowed same hops to punch through better .
This was a double batch so identical wort and same conditions in 2 identical brew buckets .
Guess what he uses now ?
 
So... rehydrate if that’s your method, don’t rehydrate if that’s your method. Either way, you’ll get beer.
 
My supplied starter started and finished quicker and was clearer in fermentor and the glass than his usual pitch of dry us-05 and allowed same hops to punch through better .
Not at all surprising that an active starter should outperform dry yeast. A starter will outperform a straight pitch of liquid yeast, too. There are too many variables to say that one thing is the key, but healthy yeast is definitely important, no matter how you get there. One of the best, fastest fermentations and best attenuated batches I've done was a split batch (different dry hops) of about 3 1/2 gallons each and both were areated like crazy and pitched dry with one packet of US-05 per bucket. Haven't bothered experimenting to see whether the overpitch or the aeration was more responsible, but I don't doubt that both had a positive effect.
 
Must say that i always re hydrate my yeast's now and find a much quicker getaway.
US-05 is a good one.Over here in UK we have a 'Crossmyloof' range of yeasts ,fairly new to the market here.The equivilent to US-05 is a prefered yeast now.I like Gervin yeast,some say it masks hop's,but for me it's a good allrounder.
 
First, apologies for the earlier post: I could have been clearer and thanks to JeffPN for pointing that out. Now to the crux of the issue: To remove any confusion at all about my position on rehydration, rehydrate unless you have a good reason not to. This is a simplification of the principle of pitching enough healthy yeast to complete the fermentation and to clean up the beer. It's not a simple question and yes, overpitching can be harmful to your beer. As a rule of thumb, a packet of dry yeast, sprinkled on top without rehydrating or a packet of liquid yeast will ferment five gallons of a 1.040 beer well. Your beer or your volume get bigger, you need more yeast. You can get more yeast, about double, by rehydrating the dry yeast in water before pitching because the stress of being pitched into wort kills off 40%-60% of the yeast. You may not want it. Hefeweizens should be underpitched to develop their flavor. If you like estery beer, you might want to underpitch. If you like diacetyl, Samuel Smith's comes to mind, you might want to underpitch. Key is to know why you are pitching the amount of yeast you're putting in. I like clean beers so I rehydrate, use multiple packets sometimes, do starters on a stir plate. Others like it differently. To all newbies: Follow the expert advice until you know why you should deviate from it. You'll make better beer that way both before and after you know what a deviation from standard procedures do. And discount 90% of what you read in the internet. The guy who made the best-ever barleywine by pitching a half a packet of dried yeast directly into the 95 degree wort likely got lucky. And by all means, anyone, myself included, tells you you have to do a thing a certain way, grab your wallet and run. I don't believe in dogma, you shouldn't either.
 
^^^^That's the stuff! :)
And a good synopsis of the conventional wisdom. ;)
 

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