Yeast

Yeast is pretty much the most important ingredient in beer. All fermentations take place because of the yeast. In fact, a lot of yeast strains are named for the type of beer they produce (American Ale, German Ale, etc). But, I'm getting ahead of myself. Yeast for homebrewing comes in dry or liquid form. Here are some experiences I've had with each.

The Mr. Beer mixes come standard with a packet of dry brewers yeast, about the size of a packet of sugar. This is enough to make one batch of beer. Obviously, this is the quickest and easiest way to make beer. The dry yeast is activated when it is poured into your beer and it ferments. I've never had a bad batch beer using dry yeast. The down side of using dry yeast is an occaisional aftertaste to the beer. This may not be too noticable if you only ever brew with dry yeast. I made the choice to try liquid yeast and I'm hooked.

This is one of the forms in which liquid yeast is available. This is basically a packet of yeast with a small pouch inside containing unfermented beer. You keep this packet refrigerated until you are ready to activate it. Then, take the packet, place it on a table or other hard surface, and press with your hand until the small pouch inside pops. This allows the unfermented beer in the pouch to mix with the yeast, which gets the yeast already in the mode of converting sugar to alcohol before even touching your beer. The activation takes several hours (more or less depending on the temperature of the package, the individual yeast, etc) The downside of using the liquid yeast smack pack is you may be waiting for several hours for the yeast to be active enough to use. The benefit of both this and the other varieties of liquid yeast is you have a yeast strain that is active and will likely have a more thorough fermentation than simply the dry yeast variety.

Similar to the smack pack variety, although there is no internal pouch to break open and the wait time is basically none. The tube should be refrigerated before use, to keep the yeast fresh and viable.