I feel like I am accumulating anecdotal evidence that suggests longer lagtimes when I use dry yeast. As opposed to when I use liquid yeast, I do not make starters and I do not aerate, both of which is part of the lore of dry yeast handling. I do rehydrate. What are your experiences?
I haven't noticed a difference between US05 and WLP001, but Chico tends to lag more than other strains for me. Could which strains you use dry vs. liquid be weighing into your perception?
Possibly. Most of my dry experiences are with Fermentis S-05, Notty, and Windsor. Currently I am 27 hours into a BRY-97 pitch with no activity (I opened the bucket to peek). My liquid experiences are much more diversified.
It's all over the board, impossible to generalize based on liquid or dry. Windsor ale yeast, for example, can take off in a couple hours and be 100% finished in about 36 hours. Pitching rate and strain specifics are the biggies when it comes to lag times. Whether it's dry or liquid has nothing to do with it.
I'm sure there is strain to strain variation. The fastest start I ever had was US-04, properly dehydrated. 3 hours to high krausen on an American brown ale.
One more 'vote' that it is strain to strain dependent. I have had very quick starts using dry yeast and not so quick starts using dry yeast with the difference being differing strains. Cheers!
BRY-97 is a notoriously slow starter, I love the pineapple esters it produces with the right hops though. Haven't noticed slower starts with any other dry yeast.
As noted above, it depends. And nothing to fret about as long as it gets going within a couple days (unless you're a commercial brewer with limited fermenter space).
If anything the dry yeast starts quicker for me. I've recently tried Mangrove Jack's Newcastle Dark Ale and Burton Union yeasts and they worked great. I don't make starters for either, just dump it in the carboy. I prefer the White Labs liquid yeast as the tubes are much easier to pitch into a carboy. My usual strain is the Dry English Ale yeast. Since they are going to different packaging I've been thinking of going to dry yeast. It has a mch longer shelf life and I haven't had any problem with expired yeast not taking off within 24 hours. I started keeping dry yeast after I had problems with some old liquid yeast not taking off for a few days resulting in sour beer. I haven't had the problem since but I haven't used expired liquid yeast since then either. I used the dry yeast when I was out of the liquid and it worked fine. I've used several brands; SafAle English Ale, Lallemand Nottingham and Mangrove Jack. I don't hydrate it first, just pour it in. The instructions for Mangrove Jack says to sprinkle it on top of the wort.
Fret? Who me? Trust me when I say I am RDWHAHBing. I feel like I've been doing this long enough that I don't really fret any more, but I'm inquisitive by nature. The long lag I 'm currently seeing just got me wondering and thinking back to batches with long lags, and my memorable ones were dry yeast. I sort of figure that if it was a real thing and not just a case of blind luck or faulty memory, I'd remember people talking about it. By and large, no one here seems to thing it is a real thing (although @ChrisMhyre suggests maybe it is with this strain), so I'm probably guilty of selective memory. .
This is welcome news, because this is on deck for my next brew day, probably a couple weekends hence. It will only be challenged with a mild, so it better perform!
After a long run of pitching liquid ... have recently started to use me some dry fungi mainly b/c the LHBS charges 9 1/2 bills / vial v. ~$4 for ~11g dry. Liquid's tendency has produced a quick cover of krausen (< 8 hours). Dry (re-hydrated) yeast tends to take 12 hours to show signs of first contact and surface-covering krausen in ~18 hours. No diff in the outcome. Tasty ales either way.
