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When walking through a brewery supply store, you will see a variety of yeasts.

Likewise, you can find a variety of yeasts when walking through a grocery store.

What "happens" if you use the 'wrong kind' of yeast when brewing? How much of a beer's flavor / texture / body / etc is derived from the yeast vs all other ingredients?

warren
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    I think this should be on homebrew.SE - there are many similar questions there about using wine yeast or bakers' yeast to brew beer. If you want to know specifically how much of a beer's flavor/aroma profile comes from the yeast, then rephrasing the question to that affect will remove the emphasis on homebrewing. – mdma Mar 17 '14 at 21:41
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    As phrased, it's more about homebrewing. – mdma Mar 17 '14 at 22:27
  • @mdma - did not know the homebrew.SE was live: and actually cannot see why it shouldn't be part of this site, as "homebrew" is exclusively about "beer" :) – warren Mar 18 '14 at 16:17
  • Homebrewers also make wine and mead. (Whether the ones on the SE site do, I don't know. But in general...) – Monica Cellio Mar 19 '14 at 03:29
  • @MonicaCellio - wine is not "brewed" .. though I suppose you could lump them together a bit :) – warren Mar 19 '14 at 15:04
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    Right; brewing vs vintning. But they have a bunch of questions about wine, so it looks like both are in scope there. – Monica Cellio Mar 19 '14 at 15:17

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Short answer; you get a lot of the flavour from the yeast, you can get a fairly big difference by varying the yeast in your recipe.

For example, a Saison and a Pale ale have similar ingredients, but taste quite different, a Saison yeast imparts a considerable amount of flavour... likewise if you use a lager yeast, and properly lager your beer, you can get a different flavour again, without modifying any other part of your recipe.

Lots of discussion on HomeBrewTalk forums, and other places. For a fun experiment, brew split batches and try two different yeasts to compare!

Cameron
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