Taste compares : Standard Mash versus YLAY

[Dougmatt]

Not sure about the best place for this, but I wanted to start a new thread specifically to document & collect anyone’s thoughts comparing YLAY to standard mash yeasts.

I’m just working through a side by side of SCD’s CROW recipe. One standard mash with DADY yeast, and an identical YLAY ferment.

Here’s my YLAY CROW process:

20 Gallon Batch
28 lbs Corn meal
4 lb Red Wheat Malt
4 lb White Wheat Malt
4 lb Rye Malt
2 lb Toasted Oats

42 pounds or 19kg

Put all grains ground to flour into single fermentation vessel (25G)
Add hot water (my tap can get to 130+F)
Allow to cool to 90F
Pitch 100g YLAY
Maintain the temperature to be 85°F or so
Stir twice every day in the first three days.

I’ve just finished the spirit run on the traditional (same recipe as give, done just like SCD recipe) and now doing strip run on this. Smells very different on the strip. Hope to get to spirit by next week and will provide tasting notes of white side by side. Plan to age a similar cut on glass of each to taste over time.

Hoping anyone else doing this (or thoughts on similar) would share.

So far one thing to note, I am getting approximately the same amount of alcohol produced out of each batch strip which indicates to me a similar beer abv. Some people say their “conversion” with YLAY is better, but I am not seeing that. There may be slightly more coming through but not macro detectable.

I also ended up with about the same amount of beer ( a little more usuable from YLAY it seems as the “curd” from today after squeezing is less.