I’m planning to brew a Finnish Sahti-inspired beer soon and I’m unwilling to risk a batch on bread yeast. For anyone who’s had the fortitude to actually use bread yeast, what sort of flavors and attenuation did the bread yeast give you?
Alternatively, which commercially available strain will get me in the same ballpark flavor-wise?
Thanks!
David
You’re making the beer, use the bread yeast.
I’m developing a recipe to be scaled up for a commercial batch and I’m not willing to use bread yeast in the brewery, so I’m really looking for a substitution.
I’ve never had Sahti, but I’ve read about it being phenolicy and having banana flavors. Maybe a hefeweizen yeast would be appropriate?
Sometimes it supposedly does have those flavors. Other bread yeast have been reported as fairly neutral.
I say use the bread yeast. I made a batch of cider this year with bread yeast, as a test of my equipment and processes since I had the stuff in storage for about the past 10 years.
Early flavors were really funky, like a cross between green apple and wet cardboard. But those aged out after a couple of months and the cider became super-crisp and very delicious. And don’t dump it out in case the first tasting is strange! Let it sit and the flavors will age out.
I really doubt that companies “make” bread yeast, it is more of a byproduct of the beer industry that gets packaged.
Is it too late to run a few test batches? Seems like a big risk that you could mitigate if you split a batch and tried with a couple different yeasts.
