I have done about 5 to 6 batches of beer since January and most of them I used the Nottingham dry yeast from Danstar. Firstly, it was highly recommended by my local homebrew store for beginners and I trust my homebrew store for such information. Although I won’t say that the owner is something of a beer brewing god but at least he is rather keen on his work and his beers. In fact, all of the beers I done with the Nottingham yeast came out fine. My now very popular Australian Pale Ale (among my friends) are all done with this Nottingham yeast. Those bottles of ales produced a lot of happy and drunk faces. Don’t you just love it when that happens?

The thing about the Nottingham yeast is that it is a neutral yeast, which basically means that the yeast itself doesn’t add much flavour to your brew. So all flavours must come from your hops, malts, grains and other adjuncts. It allows you to play with your hops and malts (as well as your adjuncts) knowing that the yeast isn’t contributing much flavour to your final product. Great for beginners like me to experiment with different malts and hops. In Singapore, a lot of drinkers would more likely drink a lager than an ale. So if your aim is to produce a lager (like) beer but don’t have the necessary equipment to make a lager, then using this yeast will help make it more “lager-like”.

The other advantages of using the Nottingham yeast is that it is a very strong fermenter. My medium gravity wort had completed the majority of it’s fermentation is just under 5 days. My low gravity brew took me about 3 days or even less. So if you are an impatient brewer, then this dry yeast is certainly very desirable to you. Furthermore, the yeast is highly flocculent so you can achieve a very clear beer without much cloudiness as compared to other yeast. I guess this is something which everyone strives for in their beers. Perhaps we are just too spolit by commerical beers?

Anyway, if you have some other yeast which you would like me to test out on my brews, please do not hesitate to send them my way. I am rather keen to test out other strains of yeast and see how much it affects the resulting beer.