Picobrew...Thoughts

Its not all dried yeast as I did brew a BrewFerm Saison extract kit earlier this year and the dried Belgian yeast worked perfect.

The Atomic Amber uses Safale US-05 Beer Yeast ... not a fan of it at all and this is not the first time I've tried that yeast but I didn't have a choice at the time.

 

Since many award-winning beers have been made with US-05 (aka Chico), I'd humbly suggest that it's not the yeast but the way it was used (ferm temp, pitching rate, etc.) that might be the problem here. I know the Pico regulates temp pretty carefully, though, so I suppose it's possible you just don't like Chico @Jason. Do you like Sierra Nevada beers?

 

I brew with US-05 a lot, probably 9 times a year. I personally think it is a great yeast. YMMV?

Cheers!

 

Will the real Chico please stand up?

A little off topic, but nonetheless interesting, IMO...

Looking at the latest SureGork clade chart (Sept 2019), it looks like US-05 and WLP001, both often referred to as "chico," are not only not the same strain, they don't even appear to be close siblings. Based on the chart, I'd call them "cousins." Interestingly, Wyeast 1792 (no longer sold, but reportedly the New Belgium house strain) is closer to US-05 than US-05 is to WLP001. And although Wyeast 1056 (the third "chico") doesn't appear on the chart (at least by that name), ->> this article <-- strongly implies that Wyeast 1056 belongs to another group entirely.

 

Hey, fair enough. But the fact remains that many award-winning beers (both homebrew and pro) have been made with US-05 and it's a widely loved strain in many styles.

But of course taste is personal and Jason has every right not to like it!

 

Yes... Love SN because they know how to brew high quality beer, their facilities are top notch. Perhaps it just comes down to the packet of dried yeast that I was given was garbage. Perhaps I screwed up somewhere as well. From the batch I brewed from the recipe kit I was given ... it was just OK, I expected more. The batches after that have been good to great with White Labs yeast.

 

I'm still brewing on the system that was given to me, I do have to say ... it does a great job at keeping temp and all. I'll post some notes soon.

 

I always got the best results culturing yeast from a bottle of SNPA. All the "Chico-ish" strains I can buy fall short (1056 is probably closest).

Unfortunately SN started using a separate strain for conditioning so that option is no longer available.

 

Since when? Never heard that.

 

About 2015, I think. Heard it from @honkey and have no reason to question what he says.

I would be very happy to hear that this is not true, but I fear that it is.

 

That is indeed what I was told years ago and I do believe it to be true. Several yeast strains have been released in the last 10 years that are intended for bottle or cask conditioning. Sierra Nevada does remove their yeast after fermentation and they definitely do add yeast back in. In my opinion, that is the best practice for bottle conditioning if you have the ability to do so and it wouldn’t make much sense to add Chico back into it when those other strains can condition so much faster. In fact, I’ve conditioned casks in as little as 24 hours after pitching Lallemand’s CBC yeast.

 

Hopefully @SierraTerence will chime into this discussion and provide further details.

Cheers!

 

How much cleanup is really involved in these machines? That's probably my biggest issue with brewing at this point.

 

A huge pain in the ass ... lots of time and water wasted trying to soak and spray each part out. After everything is washed out then you need to run a cleaning cycle as well because there is a good amount of wort still in the machine.

 

Update ... so the 1st machine that was loaned to me didn't work at all so they sent a second one. I was about 10 brews in and earlier this week I just had started a brew up and there was a loud electrical pop and about five seconds later the machine died. Thankfully no water hit the grain yet though water was leaking everywhere else. I would have been royally pissed off if I spent $2500.00

Thankfully I had enough equipment that I could piece together and brewed and IPA from the salvaged batch yesterday and clean up was so much easier.

 

After 33 years, my homebrewing is still low tech, gravity and elbow grease, and I like it that way. Being a chemist, I do pay attention to water chemistry, mash pH, fermentation temp, sanitation etc. but the basic process doesn't need much fooling with.

 

Completely agree, I'm glad I held on to so some of my older equipment. Was quite easy to whip that batch up, just like riding a bike more or less. ;-)