The Pros & Cons of Dry vs. Liquid Yeast in Beer Brewing

As a brewer, you already know that your final product can live or die based on the yeast you put into it. Yeast can be finicky to work with: it’s a living organism, and you can’t always predict how it will behave. Depending on your methods and the kind of beer you want to produce, you have a choice to make between dry yeast and liquid yeast. We’ll go through the pros and cons of dry versus liquid yeast in beer brewing so that you can know which will work for you.

Dry Yeast: Pros

For the most part, dry yeast has a higher cell count than liquid yeast. That fact alone might be the reason you’d want to rely on it rather than liquid yeast. If cost is a concern, dry yeast is almost always more affordable than liquid yeast, and it has a longer shelf life. Dry yeast also doesn’t require as strict storage conditions to stay usable for a long period of time.

Dry Yeast: Cons

Not all kinds of yeast can survive the process of drying out. This means that your number of choices when it comes to a strain are usually fewer with dry yeast. You might have also heard that dry yeast isn’t as high quality as liquid yeast. This is true for some brands, although many producers of yeast are quickly closing the gap in quality for their dried strains.

Liquid Yeast: Pros

Because it doesn’t need to go through the drying process, liquid yeast is as fresh as yeast gets. This means it’s already active and ready to start making beer. Its freshness means you have a lot more strain options to choose from, which translates to more types of beer you can experiment with.

Liquid Yeast: Cons

Cost is often the major barrier to using liquid yeast for brewing beer. If you plan on storing liquid yeast for any amount of time, you’ll need to make sure you have the right conditions for it. Extreme temperatures on either end of the spectrum can easily kill liquid yeast. This temperature requirement also means that shipping liquid yeast is often a riskier procedure.

Knowing the pros and cons of dry versus liquid yeast in beer brewing can often make one option seem like the clear winner. But both options will make great beer as long as you know how to handle them. Craftmaster Stainless makes yeast brink tanks that will make it for you easy to store and transport your yeast between different batches. Make sure you have at least one if you want to protect that precious yeast as much as possible.