Home Brewing yeast – What is Yeast? Yeast is a little, single-cell organism, one of the simplest forms of plant life, which is responsible for the fermentation process in beer. Yeast converts the simple sugars into ethanol.
The two most common species used are Saccharomyces cerevisiae (Brewers Yeast) used for Ale and classed as a top-fermenting yeast. Then there is S. carlsburgiensis / Saccharomyces carlsbergensis used for lager and classed as bottom-fermenting yeast.
Home Brewing Yeast essentially takes simple sugars like glucose and maltose and giving the beer both its alcohol content and its carbonation from the carbon dioxide.
Homebrewers can purchase yeast strains that come from commercial breweries from around the world.
