Controversial Homebrewing Opinions

I'd like to see the evidence for this one. Anecdotally, all of the Grainfather/Robobrew users I know build their own recipes and many have modified the machine to suit their needs.

Picobrew users, on the other hand...

 

Saisons and bitters in the 3-4% range are perfect session beers IMO. And a good Berliner/gose should be in that range, too.

 

FTFY

 

When I said I've never used the dry, I meant the Munich Classic (in place of 3068). That said, I haven't used dry yeasts very much at all, compared with liquid. I have used US-05, but my "Chico" pecking order usually has WLP001 at the top. The three (WLP001, US-05, Wyeast 1056) are similar, but not the same.

 

I haven't. But I also never felt like I truly replicated beers when subbing one for another.

But others have done triangle testing. Brulosophy even found a rare result (by their criteria) "suggesting participants in this xBmt were able to reliably distinguish" between US-05 and WLP001. There was about a one fifth of one percent probability the results were due chance.

Also, they are different strains genetically.

 

I brewed many well exceeding 5% that I thought was silly for some reason.

 

I did not know that Lallemand produced two different Munich yeast strains. Thanks for the clarification.

Cheers!

 

They now market the Munich as a wit beer yeast I think, I've used Munich Classic a few times and it produces a very good hefeweisen imo. For my next ones though I want to culture up from bottles of Schneider and Maisel's

 

Man, don’t blink or you will miss something.

From the spec sheet for Munich:

“Munich yeast is a relatively neutral strain which can be used to produce a wide variety of Wheat beer styles. Esters and phenol production is lower than for traditional hefeweizen strains such as Munich Classic. Munich provides a baseline profile of banana and spice aromas, but leaves space for the brewer to showcase other spice additions. Traditional styles brewed with this yeast include but are not limited to Belgian White, American Wheat, Berliner Weiss, Gose, Hefeweizen, Dunkelweis, and Weizenbock .”

https://www.lallemandbrewing.com/docs/products/tds/TDS_LALBREW_PREM_MUNICH_ENGLISH_DIGITAL.pdf

Cheers!

 

My own sensory experience could certainly be due to that. But given triangle test results, opinions of a few others whose palates I trust, and genetics as a bonus, I'm inclined to think not.

It's not that I think US-05 is bad. In fact, I'm going to use it in my (probably) next batch, because I think it will work well for the beer I want to make. As a bonus, it's also genetically the closest thing to the yeast I'd really like to use, but can't get.

 

Have you ever cultured up say Sierra Nevada Pale Ale and compared that to the available equivalents?

 

I haven't. Actually, I can't recall even drinking a SNPA in the past several years. I do know that Sierra Nevada (per their web site) adds yeast at bottling. They don't say if it's the same as the primary yeast. They do talk about the yeast being "flat and tight" (or something like that) to the bottom of the bottle, which doesn't necessarily sound like chico(s) to me, but I suppose "flat and tight" (or whatever) is subjective.

OTOH, I've read some stories about people culturing SNPA yeast and being "sure" it's the same based on their resulting beers, so who knows?

 

SNPA tastes like rot gut to me. Flat out awful.

 

Boo this man!!

 

I dont measure gravity, or ph, or really measure anything. I still make beer. I take temps and hit volumes. I use the shit out of citra and think it is proof God loves me.

 

The biggest reason that a large portion of home brewed IPAs are terrible (and im not saying yours are), is because cold side oxidation negatively affects dry hopped beers orders of magnitude more than other styles.

Also, a lot of brewers put 90% of thier thought and effort into wort production and only 10% into fermentation and packing. It wouldn’t hurt to do it the other way around.

Great thread concept @Prep8611 !