1) What are the differences you're tasting?
I'm not at the stage where I'm doing side-by-side taste comparisons.
For the last couple of years, I choose to focus mostly on Lallemand strains. I stopped talking about MJ strains around 2020 (I saw no reason to talk about them when the response was likely "it's just repackaged Fermentis/Lallemand").
I may have a refreshed curiousty about US-05 / S-04 (and some of the newer Fermentis strains) later this fall.
IMO: US-05 is a "get'r done" work horse. I see it as slow and steady, very tolerant to ambient temperature, wort temperature, and temperature flucualation. I have brewed (and may brew again) a lot of enoyable beers with US-05 in a basement with seasonal ambient temperatures (55 to 65F) and "advanced" "swamp cooler" techniques.
- normal strength ale? two weeks fermentation, two weeks bottle conditioning.
- imperial strength ale? add a week to fermentation and a week bottle conditioning
- barley wine? pitch a sachet (or two) and give it time; US-05 is always better with more time
Perhaps, and unfortunately
for me in forum discussion, my curiosity recently has been: can I brew faster?
2) In the end, does those differences make the yeast worth double the cost of the competitor?
After a small number of batches with WLP001 (dry) vs my notes from a couple of other chino strains (but not side-by-side comparisons), I think I'm seeing faster starts, faster finishes, easier bottling, and easlier cleanup. For cleanup, visualize rinsing a narrow necked 3 gal plastic carboy with just warm water.
I also made a number of stupidly simple oxygen management focused changes to my brew day (both all-grain and DME+steep).
Maybe it's some combination of changes that I made all at once that are giving me better results.
"In the end", is it worth the cost? Today:
Will I spend the time to 'tease out' the important process changes?