Beer nerds have all the fun.
A few weeks ago we brewed a beer we called the We love El Salvador beer. We combined three of our favorite things about El Salvador: Coffee, Citrus and Cerveza. We brewed our California IPA base and added a bit of citrus peels and Finca San Jose coffee three different ways. The taste is pretty fantastic.
But even more fun (for us beer nerds) is that we took the exact same wert (the raw beer) and split it into two and used two different yeasts. This way we can taste the difference that the yeast has on the exact same wert. In other words isolate the flavor affect of the yeast as it relates to the grain bill and the hop load.
The results are pretty amazing.
to recap:
- The exact same wert made exactly the same way
- preapred and fermented the same
- with nothing different
- except the yeast
We used two dry yeasts, one a California style yeast and one an English style yeast.
rather than just talk about it here are the tasting notes of both:
The First beer with the English Ale Yeast that tends to give more fruity, malty notes.
Beer Score
(1 is sucky, 2 is marginal, 3 is decent, 4 is darned good, 5 is awesome)
aroma of pear and toffee, honey. Very crisp, clean and tight opening notes with tight citrus and strong pronounced hop bitters. Lots of fruity esters with pear, peach and lemon. High but fast finish. Malty middle flavors come on strong. Malt notes continue to increase as temperature warms. Lime peel increases in finish. Very dry, crisp finish. Hard but not sharp bitterness in the finish of lime and hops. Balanced by a rich toffee-like malt backbone. Mouthfeel is thicker and more syrupy but balanced against a hard bitterness and more citrus peel and very little coffee notes.
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The second beer made with a California style yeast that gives a crisper, cleaner, slightly earthy flavor with pronounced hop clarity.
Beer Score
(1 is sucky, 2 is marginal, 3 is decent, 4 is darned good, 5 is awesome)
aromas of light lemon, fresh citrusy american hops. A bit of earthy, woodsy flavor leads into a hint of fresh pine and lemon leaves. Super clean and less bitter than the english one. Lots of delicate citrus flavors, aromas dance around. Bitterness is less hard but more bright. Very round and silky without a malty sryupy mouthfeel. Coffee and Citrus flavors abound in the middle and the finish. Aromas of both coffee and citrus in the finish. Hop flavor is higher and more pine and citrus. Less body and much lower malt flavors.
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Overall the differences are quite striking. The english yeast delivered a far more malty, fruit estery beer with harder but less complex hop flavors and aromas. The california yeast gave a cleaner, more citrusy and fresher flavor with less malt flavors with higher hop bitters but not as hard.
Which one do we like better?
Well we actually like parts of both. Overall the California yeast brings more of the flavors we like, especially accenting the hops, citrus and coffee. But we really like the malty, fruit esters of the english yeast. So we shall see….
THe California Yeast won out over the weeks as it remained crisp and clean and citrusy. THe English yeast got more and more bitter over time.