Hi all! I’m trying to help out my buddy who owns a homebrew shop. He wants to carry liquid yeasts and he’d like to know what yeasts to make sure he has on hand. So if you would, just jot down what your favorite liquid yeasts are that you use most frequently. Separate into ales and lagers please.
For example…
My most frequently used ale yeasts are…
Lager I don’t do as many, but they’d be…
Thanks in advance. Cheers!
That’s a pretty good list. I’d add : Ale - 1214, 1762, 3944, 3522 Lager - 833
I usually use dry yeast, so my list is pretty short.
Ale:
1968/WLP002
3711
3864 (Seasonal)
WLP013
1762
Lager:
2633
2278
Lagers 830, 833, 835 Lager X (seasonal)
Ales I use a lot of different ones. 002 Essex (seasonal), 1469, 051, 1728 and so on. 3787 if I am doing a Belgian.
i only use about a half dozen strains, 2 most frequently (001/830). if he was really looking to focus on always keeping strains on hand to keep customers happy, i’d cull your list to the following :
ale:
001/1056
002/1968
007/1098
029/2565*
lager:
830/2124
833/2308*
800/2001
810/2112 (hybrid)
*not necessarily same strain…
i think those are the most commonly used strains and if he kept them in house and monitored his inventory to always keep them in stock, he’d keep the masses happy. prob need to add at least 2 belgians to the list, but i don’t brew them often and couldn’t tell you which ones to go for.
I’d order in some other strains like Denny’s 50, Irish Ale, Alt, Oktoberfest Blend, scottish ale etc on occasion or special order - maybe to fill out a minimum order and see how they sell and perhaps adjust the list as he becomes more familiar with local demand.
Rcemech, has he considered contacting the yeast labs to see what they recommend, and what their best selling yeasts are?
I would hope so, but the shops purchase yeasts from the manufacturer and that doesn’t necessarily directly correlate to what the homebrewers are using most frequently. He was asking around though so I thought I’d help him out.
Ale:
WLP001
WLP002
WLP007
I have not made a lager yet.
In general I really like:
Ales:
1056
1272
1450
3068
3522
Lagers:
2124
2206
833
838
There’s still a lot of lager strains I’m wanting to try. Since I get a pack and use it for multiple generations before starting on a new strain, I don’t get a chance to try a whole bunch in a year’s time.
+1
Except for WLP029/2565, which I consider to be a specialist strain. That list is pretty much on the money. The only reason why I do not consider 2112 to not be a specialist strain is because it is the lager strain for people who do not have the ability to ferment in the fifties. Wyeast 2112 is actually not a hybrid or even traditional steam strain. Anchor acquired the strain used to ferment Anchor Steam from Wallerstein Laboratories in the mid-seventies. I covered a much older San Francisco culture in the blog entry that I posted late last night entitled “There’s Gold In Davis, California.”
I have some pretty similar favorites, but these are my most common:
Ale:
WLP007 Dry English
WLP001 California ale
WLP002 English Ale
Wy1469 West Yorkshire
Wy1007 German Ale
WLP530 Abbey Ale
Wy3522 Belgian Ardennes
Wy3711 French Saison
WLP565 Saison I
WLP566 Saison II
Lager:
WLP833 Bock
Wy2206 Bavarian Lager
Wy2124 Bohemian Lager
Bacteria/Brett:
Wy3278 Lambic Blend
Wy3763 Roselare
WLP650 Brett Brux
WLP665 Flemish Blend
Nothing new to add but my ales for the last 2.5 years have all been done with :
001, 090, 1450 when using liquid
My lagers have been with
800, 830, 833, and a couple fest beers with 820 (skip this one)
I typically only use liquid for Belgian Ales so:
3522, 3787, 1214 and 1762
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I do mostly lagers, so 830, 833, and 838 are my go to yeast. For ales, I would add 1728 for Scottish.
British beer - 1028
American beer - 1056
German beer - 1007, 2308
These I use routinely
1056 Am
1728 Scott
2308 Munich
5526 Brett L
5335 Lacto
3724 Belgian Saison
On occasion
1084 Irish
3763 Roselare
Recently
1275 Thames Valley (jury still out, Im looking for a favorite English)
Coming up soon
2352 Munich II
2278 Czech
I thought I was pretty much a boring brewer till I actually listed them out. Yikes!
Ha, yeah, after listing mine out, I actually realized I am a boring brewer. Pretty much just lagers with a few strains and a couple ale strains mixed in here and there.
Reading through this thread I realized how few strains I have used over six years, or at least how few strains I had purchased.
As far as the business goes you can see most brewers tend to use a relatively small set of all the strains available to us from the major labs. The prospective business owner should look at how the distributor will allow purchases to be made (e.g. whether there are set blocks of yeast strains that must be bought and volume pricing) and what policies are available to facilitate orders (e.g. distributor takeback of unsold and expired yeast and ease of special ordering). Ideally the shop should sell every strain it can afford to stock but if the shop is losing money on expiring yeast and the variety isn’t bringing in customers to make up for those losses then a more limited selection is more prudent.
Excellent thread, I’m going to use this data to get some more ideas of my own. I use dry yeast about 50% of the time, but my favorite liquid yeasts in approximate order of use and favoritism (all good, none “bad”):
Ales
WLP001
WLP530
2565
WLP029
WLP400
WLP380
WLP550
WLP013
WLP007
1007
WLP002
Lagers
2206
2308
WLP830
Mead
4184
One other thought - find out which brand your competitor carries and carry the opposite. My closest LHBS’s carry White Labs. If someone nearby carried Wyeast I’d be a frequent flier.