Lawrence Brewers Guild

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?

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.

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.

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

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.

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