IPA fermented with Baker's yeast

Discussion in 'Homebrewing' started by mikehartigan, Jan 30, 2014.

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  1. mikehartigan

    mikehartigan Maven (1,421) Apr 9, 2007 Illinois

    I had about a gallon of reasonably clean (not a lot of trub) IPA wort left in the kettle, so, rather than feeding the local fish, I decided to throw caution to the wind and ferment it with Baker's yeast.

    I filled a 1/2 gal growler and pitched about 1/2 tbsp of Red Star Instant Dry Yeast (about $1.50/lb at Costco/Sams - about 3 cents per 'standard' 11g pitch for a 5 gallon batch :slight_smile:). Lag time, krausen, etc, pretty much mirrored the US-05 batch in the carboy. FG was 1.022 versus 1.011 for the US-05.

    Chilled it, carbed it, and brought it to my brewclub meeting last evening for opinions. Unfortunately, the 'legitimate' beer is not quite ready, so we couldn't do an A-B.

    The consensus observations:
    * It didn't suck nearly as bad as one might expect. IOW, it has potential, if a recipe is designed around its unique characteristics.
    * It tasted drier than the 1.022 FG would suggest
    * Lots of Peach - could be that it simply prefers a cooler fermentation temp. My basement's ambient temp is mid-60's.
    * Very muted hop flavor and aroma (hop schedule was equal amounts of Amarillo, Cascade, and Chinook: 3 oz@15 mins, 1.5 oz@10, 3 oz@5)

    I'll probably play with this in the future to see what I can do with it. Past discussions in this forum (100% speculation, since no one would cop to ever having done it) always drew the same conclusion: the homebrewing community wouldn't tolerate upwards of $10 per pitch for a dedicated Brewer's yeast if 3 cents worth generic Baker's yeast could do the job. (Speculative conclusions like that are like scratching a blackboard, IMO)
     
    #1 mikehartigan, Jan 30, 2014
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  2. AlCaponeJunior

    AlCaponeJunior Grand Pooh-Bah (3,452) May 21, 2010 Texas
    Society Pooh-Bah

    Interesting. I would have no problem admitting it if I tried something like this. And since the bread maker gets used fairly often around here, there's usually baker's yeast in stock. Perhaps I'll brew up a quick batch as soon as my mr beer keg is freed up, and see what happens. For this type of experiment I'd probably use 2lbs of extract (light), and a very simple partial mash (say 1 lb of base malt and 1/4-3/8 lb crystal, low SRM). I'd give it a fair blast of hops up to about pale ale strength so I could tell if they were muted, but also so the yeast's flavors could (at least to some extent) be identified. I think I'll try this.
     
    #2 AlCaponeJunior, Jan 30, 2014
  3. BumpkinBrewer

    BumpkinBrewer Pundit (993) Jan 6, 2010 Massachusetts

    This is how all beer will be fermented during the zombie apocalypse. Glad it will still be tasty.

    edit: not to self: add bundles of bread yeast to bug out bag
     
    #3 BumpkinBrewer, Jan 30, 2014
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  4. GreenKrusty101

    GreenKrusty101 Initiate (0) Dec 4, 2008 Nevada

    "It didn't suck nearly as bad as one might expect"

    Can't wait to try it myself :rolling_eyes:...1 gal batch maybe, but it seems the yeast will always be the weak link in any recipe.
     
    #4 GreenKrusty101, Jan 30, 2014
  5. Eriktheipaman

    Eriktheipaman Pooh-Bah (2,303) Sep 4, 2010 California
    Pooh-Bah

    Sounds like prison. Very interesting though and I believe it is a strain of Sacc. but I'm not positive.
     
    #5 Eriktheipaman, Jan 30, 2014
  6. Ilanko

    Ilanko Initiate (0) Aug 3, 2012 New York

    #6 Ilanko, Jan 30, 2014
  7. premierpro

    premierpro Savant (1,060) Mar 21, 2009 Michigan

    I like the Price!
     
    #7 premierpro, Jan 30, 2014
  8. VikeMan

    VikeMan Grand Pooh-Bah (3,067) Jul 12, 2009 Pennsylvania
    Pooh-Bah

    It is. In fact, it's Saccharomyces cerevisiae, the same species as most of the yeast strains used for brewing Ales. But of course it hasn't been steered over the years and centuries toward characteristics for making great beer of any particular type.
     
    #8 VikeMan, Jan 30, 2014
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  9. pweis909

    pweis909 Grand Pooh-Bah (3,250) Aug 13, 2005 Wisconsin
    Pooh-Bah

    This reminds me of Joe's Ancient Orange mead. Please indulge a brief digression from beer.
    If you spend time looking around the mead forums, you may have come across JOA and recipe variants. The original recipe was allegedly optimized to make use of the "ancient" process of mead making (think, 1970s and 80s, when there wasn't much information available to the hobbyist about yeast metabolism and the availability of yeast was quite limited. The recipe uses bread yeast, optimizes the amount of honey based on the attenuation and tolerance of bread yeast, and allegedly supplies nutrition via some fruit chunks and raisins. I made a JOA variant this past year and it wasn't bad.

    Back to beer, the JOA could have been better, but it makes me believe once could optimize a decent beer built around bread yeast, as mikehartigan suggests.
     
    #9 pweis909, Jan 30, 2014
  10. jncastillo87

    jncastillo87 Initiate (0) Jan 27, 2013 Texas

    Probably wouldnt hurt to add 10% table sugar to the recipe as well to see how it helps the yeast and might make a nice dry finish.
     
    #10 jncastillo87, Jan 30, 2014
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