Brewed with this yeast recently and have to say it makes a tasty beer. The flavor description is pretty spot on.
“A popular yeast strain with a Berlin lineage that is famous for producing amazing lagers with soft malt character and balanced esters. “
I direct pitched heavy at 1.8 grams per liter at 65F and lowered temp to 50F for fermentation. The yeast is much slower than Diamond taking a full 12 days to hit terminal. Diamond typically finishes by day 6-7 with a similar pitch rate and temp, with peak fermentation temp of 55F.
Definitely less malty than Diamond and pleasant ester profile. Very slight sulfur with a crisp finish.
Recipe was mostly pils malt with 2% carahell. 1.047-1.009. Large Whirlpool charge of Strata for the only hop addition. The hops and esters are working well together.
Going to give the Cellar Science German a try next in a more traditional Helles.
I am pretty sure that yeast is a repack of Fermentis S-23. The morebeer.com website has this little nugget on their S-23 page (which I am sure Fermentis just loves).
i always wonder how that’s possible though. just buying in huge quantity and reselling on a low margin, undercutting what retail stores sell the original for?
Absolutely. Everything is so overpriced these days, it wouldn’t take much creativity to steal some profits away from the bigger companies. Another piece of the puzzle is package size. In the case of Mangrove Jack, notice how the typical pack size of 11 to 11.5 grams from other manufacturers is miraculously only 10 grams in the MJ packs. Hmm…
Just curious, are these “off-brands” really full-on repacks, as in, the genuine original product simply put a different package? I have read on this forum that they are, but I have my doubts (no offense, folks).
Trader Joe’s does a lot of “repacks,” where they contract with major food manufacturers for popular products and slap the TJ’s brand name on them. But TJ’s-branded products don’t taste the same, or as good, as the original product from the mfr. I assume it’s because TJ’s instructs the contractor to take various shortcuts to make the products cheaper so that their margins are higher. So same product, but slightly lower quality.
Morebeer sells S-23 for $0.56 per gram while the Berlin yeast is (typically) $0.37 per gram. If these are the same strain, this is a pretty big difference–big enough to make we wonder if I’d be getting the same product.
My skepticism might be off-base here, and admittedly I have not used Cellar Science or Mangrove Jack repacks, so I can’t speak to how great they might be…
Brewmaster is the MoreBeer wholesale brand. A while back I found this entry on the Brewmaster site: “Cellar Science takes the best winemaking and brewing products from across the world, and packages them in convenient sizes for you. Our yeast is packaged in a dedicated, state of the art room with HEPA filtration. Chemicals and additives are packed in convenient sizes for 6 gallon or 60 gallon batches of wine, or efficient bulk sizes. We use custom designed oxygen, light, and moisture barrier bags for the best quality and shelf life.”
However, they seem to have edited that statement lately.
They do this with grain under the Brewmaster name and hops under the Artisan name as well as other product lines. The Cellar Science brand is for yeast, enzymes, yeast nutrients, and additives.
Though I cannot confirm from their site and emails from the company give no clarity, I believe Mangrove Jacks uses the same business model.
Most of the packaged food sold through major brands and store brands are manufactured at a relatively small number of businesses that pack products under different labels. Yes major brands might tweak recipes or require tighter variance to ensure a certain standard of quality that store brands might not but the difference in products is rarely substantial.
Very little would stop you from buying commercial sized pitches of yeast from BSI or another major yeast lab and repackage or grow up the culture and start your own lab.
