Beer Forum

What yeasts to keep in your yeast library?

Depends if you trust the Pope or not. I spent a little time writing down all the yeasts that are recommended for the different beers in Brewing Classic Styles. I plugged the results into excel and it sorted them for me. So now I have a list of the yeasts needed to brew all the BCS recipes and which ones will give you the most recipes for your dollar.

As an exercise in wasting my time - I also did the same thing with the recipe database on my other beer forum Aussiehomebrewer. In their recipe database, there are approximately 300 recipes (and thats just AG recipes) that I put through a similar process.

For the BCS recipes, I only worried about Wyeast strains, because thats all I can get. But for the main DB I included everything, Wyeast, Whitelabs, and the dry strains. The BCS strains also have some info about flavour, attenutation (high/low) and alcohol tolerance. I didn't do that for teh rest because I do have some sort of a life.

I have decided that I will keep ten strains active and ready to brew on agar slants, this will allow me to brew a good and fairly authentic version of almost every style. I will keep a few other strains (as well as masters for the 10) frozen under glycol for the occasional special brew. My chosen yeasts ATM are:

A Distinctly Malty Lager - 2206 Bavarian Lager
A Crisper drier lager - 2124 Bohemian Lager
A Low attenuating English Ale - 1968 London ESB
A Higher attenuating English Ale - 1028 London Ale
A Clean American Ale - 1056 American Ale
A Belgian Ale - 3787 Trappist High grav
A Kolsch/Alt Strain - 2565 Kolsch or maybe 2575 Kolsch II if I like the one I am brewing now
A Saison Strain - Probably the 3724 but I will try a few before I settle
A Wit Strain - 3944 Belgian Witbier
A Weizen Strain - 3068 Weheinstephan

Anyway, maybe this will be helpful to other people who are wondering what strains they should keep on hand.

Thirsty

Sorted by frequency - http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pViM7Kjmw_2jO_49KmFL_BQ
Sorted by yeast type and split to separate the BCS and AHB sections http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pViM7Kjmw_2hi5O3znVtaXw

Damn... that sounds like a lot of work!

Well done! Can't open the spreadsheet unless I am a member of AussieHomebrewer, though... if you are so inclined to shoot an email my way, it's thirstymallard -at- gmail -dot- com.

Arrgh, sorry people. Thirsty Mallard points out that you wouldn't have been able to view that file unless you are an AHB member - and they of course have already seen or ignored it.

So here is another URL for it in webpage format. Google docs. I have also edited post #1 so this link appears in it rather than the AHB link.

Thirsty

Sorted by frequency - http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pViM7Kjmw_2jO_49KmFL_BQ
Sorted by yeast type and split to separate the BCS and AHB sections http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pViM7Kjmw_2hi5O3znVtaXw