Mauribrew Yeast Trial

In our early brewing days we tried a number of different yeasts, from dried yeast, through liquid yeast (which takes a bit more effort to handle) to yeast cropped from the top of a commercial brewery fermenter. But in recent brews we have settled on one yeast for our English ales which we have found to be reliable and very easy to use: Fermentis Safale S-04.

This is a cracking yeast. It has the necessary flavours for an English ale, it is dead easy to use (simply re-hydrate in some cooled boiled water, then pitch), and we’ve found that we can reliably re-use it by pitching a second (or third) brew onto the yeast cake from the previous batch. Recently I’ve discovered that a number of commercial breweries enjoy this convenience too (although they use 500g packs whilst as a homebrewer I use 11g sachets!).

There is just one down side to it – it’s expensive. An 11g sachet costs about £2.99, which when you consider that ALL the ingredients for a batch cost about £20 is quite a high proportion. I guess because it’s good it’s popular, so they can charge more for it. (Fermentis US-05 is even more expensive, at £3.35 a sachet!).

So on a whim I decided to try another yeast, just to see whether it’s anywhere near as good as S-04. Mauribrew yeast comes from Maurivin, and their Ale 514 yeast is cheaper at £1.99 a sachet.

So on Monday Andy and I brewed gyle 49 – a light bitter hopped with First Gold hops. We’ve called it “Second Gold”, because this is the second time we have used these hops. It’s fermenting right now, and the Mauribrew yeast seems to be working very busily and making good smells in the utility room. I’ll post again when it’s done and we have some feeling for whether the yeast is a success or not.