About to purchase the NB Chocolate Milk Stout and wanted to get everyone’s opinion on their yeast choices. I’ve typically only used liquid yeast, but I see here the default is the Safale dry. Anyone tried both?
I believe the default for almost every recipe is a dry yeast, although some of their Belgian kits don’t have a dry yeast option.
That being said, I started a post a week or so ago about everybody’s preferred yeast for an Imperial Stout and S-04 was a popular choice (as was US-05, another dry yeast) so I can see this being a good choice for a Milk Stout.
Milk stouts are considered a “sweet” stout, but I would suggest s-05 over s-04 because it is more attenuative. Milk stouts have lactose, an unfermentable sugar. When you combine that with a low attenuating yeast like s-04, the result would be an cloyingly sweet beer, IMO.
According to this site, I can’t find much other information on it, but S-04’s range of attenuation is pretty high (72-75%)
S-04 is a highly flocculant yeast, so I don’t trust those attenuation #s. Add in the extract and lactose and it’s a recipe for a beer with too much residual sweetness. Again, YMMV on this.
