So I’ve been off the brewing bandwagon for over a month now which is a pretty long time for me. Finally getting around to brewing my amber rye recipe which I’ve had laying around for a while. I’m mashing now and realized I don’t have any dry yeast packages lying around which I thought i did.
So the question: cool the wort and go to the store for some yeast or just pitch on onto some White Labs German Bock yeast I have laying around? A rye amber bock??? The lazy part of me is saying go for it. What think ye?
Recipe is roughly
70% base
20% rye
10% C120 and Special B
Depends… you say you have not brewed in a while… Is the german Bock yeast old? If it is a relatively old liquid yeast (and you have no starter - which is a pretty big no-no with lager yeast…) I would go get the dry yeast and use that.
I think you are setting yourself up for a sluggish/poor fermentation pitching a single vial of (Possibly) old lager yeast, with no starter.
If the bock yeast is reasonably fresh and you have a big cake, sure, make another lager if you don’t want to go to the store and are willing to wait out a lagering period. But I chill, get the wort into the fermenter with an airlock, and pitch hours later sometimes - not an issue - and would rather have beer faster in exchange for a quick trip to the LHBS for some US-05.
I guess it hasn’t been that long because I have the bock yeast still sitting in primary of a Brooklyn lager I brewed just a little over a month ago. Obviously there is enough of it, but it has been inactive for a few weeks now. I have no worries about cooling and waiting, I’ve done that plenty of times, I was more wondering about the idea of using this yeast for this ale recipe.
