In my brewing years, I have never really (except once with help) chosen a yeast strain that wasn’t either included or recommended in a recipe. The one I tried, I chose a yeast strain that matched what I wanted my beer to taste like, but did not match the style of beer. I have tried to pick hops to match my desired style (creamy, citrus, bitter, dry, etc) with better results but am still a novice.
My recent beer was a Belgian golden, and I chose a yeast that would give off some fruity flavors. I did this because I wanted to add some fruit flavoring during secondary. But the yeast strain definitely did not match a Belgian golden. I split the volume, and I racked half onto fruit and added some fruit extract flavors.
The end result was ok but not great. It tastes sort of… pale. Not like a pale ale… just sort of muted. The un-fruited beer is decent but weird. The fruit beer didn’t pick up the flavors as hoped, but tastes ok. I think if the “base” beer was better, this could have been a success.
So my overall question is… how do people choose their yeast strains and hops? Do you go by how you want the beer to feel/tase? Do you select them based on what beer you are brewing (i.e. if you are brewing a stout, pick yeast and hops that are known to work with stouts)? I want to learn more about recipe creating and tweaking, and I think I have the grain idea down for now… hops and yeast are very unknown to me.
