Danstar BRY-97 American West Coast Yeast: A Review

[msh227]

Reviving an old thread. I just made a Rye PA using this yeast for first time. It took almost 48 hours before some activity was noticeable. This thread saved me from pitching more yeast. Thanks.

 

[filthyastronaut]

Further revive. I think BRY-97 is a fantastic yeast. Works particularly well for malty and roasty styles, but can also make a great clean IPA despite supposedly muting some hop character with the high flocculation. I think it's just as good as US-05, but you should use them for different reasons.

 

[HamiltonBrian]

Further revive. I think BRY-97 is a fantastic yeast. Works particularly well for malty and roasty styles, but can also make a great clean IPA despite supposedly muting some hop character with the high flocculation. I think it's just as good as US-05, but you should use them for different reasons.

Also doing a revive; I used this yeast a lot over the past year. I wanted to make an American stout and it ate the sugar up like crazy. I mashed on the lower side so it was a dry and palatable 7% offering.

Just quickly, what would stand out as primary reasons to make use of US-05 over the Bry 97?

 

[beernutz]

Another thread revive. I brewed a 10 gallon batch about 48 hours ago and split it into two big mouth bubblers in a freezer set to 64F.

I pitched Safale T-58 Belgian Ale dry yeast in one and Danstar BRY-97 West Coast Ale dry yeast in the other. Neither yeast was rehydrated prior to pitching. Aeration was by spraying wort into fermenter.

The picture below was taken yesterday 29 hours after pitching but I just checked the freezer and after 48 hours the fermenters look the same. The OG on both was 1.051 and after 29 hours the T-58 had dropped to 1.027 (there's a Tilt hydrometer in it which you can barely see to the left of the label) while the BRY-97 was at 1.047 so something was happening even if not visibly.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

Since I started this thread nearly 2.5 years ago, I've learned some interesting info.

Following my recent US-05 vs. BRY-97 xBmt, I was told by a person I trust that the latter is these strain as WLP051, which many refer to as the Anchor Liberty strain.

It goes to show what a mess this stuff is now that we have some better genetic information on these strains. White Labs now list WLP051 as a S. pastorianus strain - it's a lager yeast. Rather than Anchor Liberty, it would be a better fit to Anchor Steam.

BRY-97 is in the Gallone Mixed group of S. cerevisiae - obviously it's a POF- non-phenolic yeast, but its nearest homebrew cousin is T-58 and it's somewhat more distantly related to Windsor/S-33. So absolutely nothing to do with WLP051.

 

[beernutz]

It goes to show what a mess this stuff is now that we have some better genetic information on these strains. White Labs now list WLP051 as a S. pastorianus strain - it's a lager yeast. Rather than Anchor Liberty, it would be a better fit to Anchor Steam.

BRY-97 is in the Gallone Mixed group of S. cerevisiae - obviously it's a POF- non-phenolic yeast, but its nearest homebrew cousin is T-58 and it's somewhat more distantly related to Windsor/S-33. So absolutely nothing to do with WLP051.

This is so odd based on my experience because the T-58 took off fermenting like a banshee with visible kruesen in less than 12 hours while the BRY-97 took between 57 and 66 hours to develop kruesen. By that time the T-58 had dropped from 1.051 to 1.018. I am not doubting your statement but the two yeasts for me in this instance have behaved very differently.

 

[dmtaylor]

This is so odd based on my experience because they T-58 took off fermenting like a banshee with visible kruesen in less than 12 hours while the BRY-97 took between 57 and 66 hours to develop kruesen. By that time the T-58 had dropped from 1.051 to 1.018. I am not doubting your statement but the two yeasts for me in this instance have behaved very differently.

They are distant cousins. However I'll agree that placement of BRY-97 in the Mixed group does seem very very weird. But that's the best data we have to go on at the moment. Maybe one day someone will come up with different data, who knows.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

This is so odd based on my experience because the T-58 took off fermenting like a banshee with visible kruesen in less than 12 hours while the BRY-97 took between 57 and 66 hours to develop kruesen. By that time the T-58 had dropped from 1.051 to 1.018. I am not doubting your statement but the two yeasts for me in this instance have behaved very differently.

Even a brother and sister can behave very differently in some respects - but will be similar in others. No doubt Usain Bolt has a slow, humble cousin somewhere. But yeah, it's interesting that T-58 is a really vigorous fermenter and BRY-97 is notoriously slow. I've not used BRY-97 at all, but you may see resemblances to T-58 (or perhaps more obviously Windsor/S-33, they're less related but nonphenolic). If you look at things like attenuation, powderiness and ester profiles, the relationship between eg T-58 and Windsor/S-33 is more obvious, although having those two genes for phenolics rather masks them.