A Lapsed Catholic

For sometime now I have been using Saf US-05 after becoming dissatisfied with my old yeast of choice Saf S-04. In the same period I swapped from fermenting in plastic jerry cans to fermenting in stainless corny kegs, as any brewer knows changing two variables at once is never a good idea but what’s done has been brewed. Recently I have been most concerned with the high ester character that my beer has shown. US-05 is renowned for being reasonably clean and neutral although there were murmurs from certain quarters about it having a potential acetal aldehyde problem. Certainly when used in my system with narrow tall fermentors with limited surface area the ester character has been significant and green apple has been a problem. And so I decided to dabble with S-04 again, many of the brews I did for the Winter Ales Fest were double batches with ½ fermented with US-05 and ½ fermented with S-04, S04 has won hands down. While the S-04 displays a little diacetyl post primary fermentation and if the fermentation gets to warm a little iso-amyl acetate (banana ester) the over all character of the beers fermented with S-04 is much cleaner. Like any Catholic its time for me to lapse I’m back in the S-04 camp.

Years First Mild

It’s slowly starting to feel like autumn. Last night I tapped the first corny of Mild for the year. Primed with dark sugar this batch of Masons Mild is exceptionally rummy and fruity with good body and mouth feel for a 3.5% beer. I knew that a mild would be a real test for the US-05 yeast. With a low gravity demanding some fruit esters to give it interest common opinion was the US-05 would be to clean and simple.

On the contrary, I have found the yeast to give my ales a distinctive honey ester and while the dark sugar is no doubt contributing the rummy character to the Mason’s I suspect the berry and dried fruit notes are from the yeast. So far so good.