I was at the home brew store in Lawrence KS. They had all Lallemand yeasts for $3 a package. I saw some of this. The owner said it competes with Fermentus S 05. I haven’t been having very good luck with O5 lately so I picked up a few packages of this stuff. I was just wondering if anybody has had any experience with it.
I just used it in an American Brown this weekend. I rehydrated it just as I do all dry yeast and it took about 36 hours for it to take off, but man, did it take off!!! Let’s just say I’m glad I used a blowoff tube. It was very active at 64F. From everything I’ve read, that’s pretty much standard protocol for that yeast. I won’t know anything about flavor profile until I take a gravity reading in a few days, but it’s my understanding that it’s fairly clean.
The lag time significantly reduces upon repitch. I’ve used the yeast a few batches at my tiny nano brewery. When the yeast is still in suspension, there are lots of bready/doughy characteristics. It drops out about the same as US-05 in my estimation. Not sure that this yeast is as sensitive to mash temperature as it is specialty grain percentage, but that might just be specific to my setup.
I just finished a keg of pale ale brewed with this yeast. Was ok- and was noticeably different than S-05.Jury is still out on this yeast.
I just used this in an IPA and can attest to the lag time. Was starting to get worried but it took off. I just kegged it and since I haven’t used US-05 in awhile, I can’t say I detect much difference yet. It seems to be a decent American Ale yeast but is more expensive than US-05.
I was very happy with this yeast in a smash APA. I have an IPA that will be bottled this weekend that also used this yeast.
It’s a clean american dry yeast. To my taste, it’s fairly close to Pacman yeast.
J