Finally Bottled Public IPA

Well I brewed it on July 14th, over eight weeks ago. I thought I'd bottle it in about three weeks from brewing date, four if I wanted it to age for a while. Turns out things have changed a bit since I brewed it, and I have been working my other job cleaning dryer vents to make a living for the past 6 or 7 weeks. So time is a bit more limited these days. Stupid working.

But I did bottle it today! It was from a Brewer's Best IPA kit, and I also dry-hopped it with Cascade plugs. But it still doesn't taste right. I think it's the dry yeast. I believe it came with Nottingham, but I didn't rehydrate it. I was reading the web site of the Nottingham maker the other day and it said something about a sulphur byproduct (like it would make S2O or something) if it was rehydrated in the beer, as opposed to rehydrated ahead of time. My first kit didn't taste so much like this, and I attempted to rehydrate that yeast first. My second kit tasted just like this (even though it was the True Brew kit) and I am pretty sure I just poured the yeast in dry, because I believed that when I rehydrated, I had to pitch like right away or I was in trouble. I think it turns out that rehydrating and pitching after a while is still better than not rehydrating at all... Live and learn.

Anyway I pitched dry into this latest kit Public IPA (it was made at what was supposed to be a promotional event, a Public Brewing). And it tastes what I would call "kind of yucky". I guess it could be sulfury, but I guess I just never really tasted sulfur or noted its taste so much. Maybe I could go get a match and strike it and smell it to see what it smells like, and infer a taste from that. Or I suppose I could try to eat it. I might need to drink another case or so of beer tonight before I try that.

The moral of the story is threefold: 1) I don't care what those guys online say - dry yeast is not as good. 2) If you must use dry yeast, please rehydrate it, or even better, make a yeast starter after rehydrating it. 3) Um I guess there's only two. Maybe I was thinking the third was it is worth it to upgrade and splurge on a smack pack of liquid yeast when you get your kit. Plus it's so cool when they swell up.