White Labs has a platinum strain of yeast called the "Australian Ale", and from what I can tell it's just coopers dry yeast in liquid form. So I decided to find out. I've brewed with the coopers dry before so I know what characteristics it has. My favorite is the bready flavor, and mouth-feel it leaves behind. I brewed a double batch(10gal.) of a standard pale, and added the coopers dry to one, and the coopers wet to the other. 12 hours after inoculating both batches the results were exactly what I expected. The dry yeast was already going, and had some krausen, where as the liquid was doing basically nothing. Things progressed as expected. The dry went very fast and finished quickly. The liquid took a few more days to finish out. The only thing uniquely different was the krausen they produced. The dry was thick, rocky, and almost filmy. The liquid had a beautiful white layer of foam. In secondary the dry took a few extra days to clear up, but the liquid yeast dropped out of suspension almost overnight. I just kegged them both, so of course I had to try them. The liquid had more of a hop bite, and was a bit lighter in body. The dry had a more subdued bitterness, and definitely more of the bready flavor. In a blind taste test everyone picked the beer brewed with the dry yeast, and I couldn't even tell much of a difference between them myself. We'll see what happens once they've conditioned for a bit. I'm not really sure what we're all supposed to learn from this, but in summation, BREW MORE BEER!!!
(dry)
(liquid)
(left-dry/right-liquid)
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