Pilsner yeast

[Pentaquark]

I was thinking of doing my first pilsner this weekend but, while I love JWL and their attempt to bring a store to Lawrence, I can't find any pilsner yeast. Well...any wet stuff, that is. I've never used the dry and don't really want to take the chance. Anyway, I was wondering if anyone had a strain on hand for a good pilsner that I could take a vial of. I have some leaf hops (mostly ahtanum) and some zythos pellets that I would be willing to give up, or I'd be happy to give the donor the $10 I would have spent on a wyeast smack pack. I don't have any grains, sadly, so I can't help there.

Anyway, if there's some floating around out there and I could have it to build up my starter, I would appreciate it.

As an aside, what do people think of dry yeast in general? I guess it's probably the same stuff if you culture it twice to get it really healthy but...I don't know. Ancient mysticism bars my path?

[Rob Martin]

As an aside, what do people think of dry yeast in general? I guess it's probably the same stuff if you culture it twice to get it really healthy but...I don't know.

In general, I really prefer liquid, particular White Labs. I used to be a Wyeast guy, but I had a couple of bad packs in a row so I started to use White Labs.

Regarding dry - I use them time to time for ales. When I have used them for lagers they didn't work so well. With lagers, you really need to pitch a crap load of yeast. Like a ridiculous amount. Google 'yeast pitch calculator' - I'm at work so I don't have the link for you.

[Pentaquark]

Well, IF I had to use the dry, I was going to do several rounds of culturing to get it up to a 3L starter. The packet into 100mL, then into 500mL, and finally into 3L.

[JMcG]

I think there is some opinion out there that you shouldn't use starters for dry yeast, just pitch more (like 3-4 packs).
Never tried a lager with dry. I recently did an ale with BRY 97 and pitched 2 packs, still had a long lag, but finished dry and pretty clean.
But, if I have time (5-6 days), I'll always build a starter from a slant culture.
jim

[Rugger1978]

I do mostly Lagers in my household. I absolutely love the White Labs Southern German Yeast. I'll buy one vial, do a stepping starter to get able to ferment a 16 gallon batch size. Then I'll schedule my brew days 1 week after kegging so that I can rinse and reuse the yeast easily. I'll ferment 4 batches of 16 gallons off the one vial. Funny thing, the best beer comes from the 2nd and 3rd generation of the yeast. I make Oktoberfest-Marzen, Munich Helles, German Pilsner and Swarzbier off that yeast.

I rarely use dry yeast, but I some Safale-05 on hand for ales just in case, lol.

I guess you were asking more if anybody had any pilsner yeast which sorry at the moment my yeast is tied up fermenting some beer.

[Pentaquark]

I do hope to start getting into slanting my yeasts soon but I'm just not at that point yet.