[denny]

But, frankly you should just try Diamond Lager yeast if it interests you because all of these yeasts are subtlety different even when they have the same lineage.

A yeast’s behavior (flavor, etc) is the most important thing. Lineage only tells you so much.

Absolutely true.  I like 34/70 very much, but have a slight preference for Diamond.

[denny]

Whereas other Fermentis strains, even if clones of famous brewery strains, are maintained by Fermentis.
W34/70 is the Weihenstephan strain and is QCed regularly to match the Weihenstephan strain.
W34/70 is the most used lager strain in the world.
It's the most common strain used in the scientific literature.
Schönram is one of the breweries using it.

Sent from my SM-G981U1 using Tapatalk

And...it is our house yeast for lagers. The W-34/70 is an awesome yeast! The Vienna Lager that I'm drinking as I type (is drinking & typing legal?) this was fermented with 34/70. Very clean, and typical of a Euro-Lager type beer.

The 34/70 will work at a wide range of temps. I have had it still fermenting down into the mid 30's.

It has worked for us for over a year, using multiple generations. There is a reason why it's the most widely used yeast worldwide. If it's good enough for the pro-brewers, it's good enough for us.

Give Diamond a try, too.  I think you'll like it at least as well.

[Village Taphouse]

I made a long string of lagers with Diamond one summer (2019?) and honestly didn't want to throw it away.  I don't remember how many batches I made but it was a good 8-10.  2124 is one of my favorite lager strains and I'm about to start it up here for summer beers.  I don't know that I would say that Diamond and 2124 are closely related although the beer was very good and the yeast performed well... good attenuation and an ability to drop bright.  I have 34/70 in my yeast fridge at the moment but I have NEVER tried it.  I also like S-189 (although it has less character to me than Diamond) and S-23.  The comment above about S-23 being the Urquell strain surprises me.  I should probably try it again. 

[ynotbrusum]

I am evenly split among 34/70, S-189 and Diamond.  I have a 34/70 Amber lager ready to rack - I fermented it under pressure, so I am seeing if that has any effect on flavor - ester production being reduced, perhaps.

[Bel Air Brewing]

Whereas other Fermentis strains, even if clones of famous brewery strains, are maintained by Fermentis.
W34/70 is the Weihenstephan strain and is QCed regularly to match the Weihenstephan strain.
W34/70 is the most used lager strain in the world.
It's the most common strain used in the scientific literature.
Schönram is one of the breweries using it.

Sent from my SM-G981U1 using Tapatalk

And...it is our house yeast for lagers. The W-34/70 is an awesome yeast! The Vienna Lager that I'm drinking as I type (is drinking & typing legal?) this was fermented with 34/70. Very clean, and typical of a Euro-Lager type beer.

The 34/70 will work at a wide range of temps. I have had it still fermenting down into the mid 30's.

It has worked for us for over a year, using multiple generations. There is a reason why it's the most widely used yeast worldwide. If it's good enough for the pro-brewers, it's good enough for us.

Give Diamond a try, too.  I think you'll like it at least as well.

On your advice, I will give it a try. Stand by for news!

[Saccharomyces]

Whereas other Fermentis strains, even if clones of famous brewery strains, are maintained by Fermentis.
W34/70 is the Weihenstephan strain and is QCed regularly to match the Weihenstephan strain.
W34/70 is the most used lager strain in the world.
It's the most common strain used in the scientific literature.
Schönram is one of the breweries using it.

Fermentis W-34/70 may produce satisfactory results for a lot of brewers, but not for me.  Up until this pass through the hobby, I fermented almost exclusively with cultures I either received on slant or plated for singles and put on slant, which makes me a difficult customer to please.  Everyone keeps talking about how great dry yeast is today, but the convenience factor must outweigh the small differences in the final product that matter to me. That is the nicest thing I can say at the present time. I just kegged a batch that I fermented with a direct pitch of Imperial L28 Urkel (which cost less than two packages of Ferments W-34/70 at my LHBS).  My girlfriend who is completely new to brewing noticed how much smoother this batch was while still green than the batch fermented with Fermentis W-34/70 was after lagering. Both beers had the same gravity and were fermented using the same basic fermentation protocol.  One beer came out of the primary drinkable.  The other, well, I will be glad when the keg is empty.   The W-34/70 batch still has a faint phenolic note and a definite lemon-like sourness, both of which my non-BJCP-trained girlfriend picked up on.  Although, she does have an amazing palate due to decades of gourmet cooking.

I guess the moral of the story is that if Fermentis W-34/70 is working for a brewer, he/she should stick with it.  However, until I find a dry lager culture that performs as well as liquid yeast, let alone as well as cultured yeast, I plan to stick to liquid and cultured yeast.  Considering the small number of viable cells in an 11g package (at most, 55 billion for most dry cultures), liquid yeast is price competitive with dry yeast.  I  am willing to give Diamond Lager a shot because, even though it can be slow to start, BRY-97 is the sole dry culture I have used that comes close in performance to liquid or cultured yeast.  Given the choice between the two dry yeast propagators, my bets are hedged on Lallemand at this point.  Every brewer needs a "just in case" culture.

[Saccharomyces]

By the way, my favorite all-time lager yeast culture is NCYC 679.  I acquired it on slant from the NCYC during my first pass through the hobby.  I believe that this culture may be from the defunct Stein Brewery in Bratislava.  If S-23 is a fruity lager, I suspect that NCYC 679 is related.  It is not ale fruity, but it does produce an interesting, subdued ester profile, even when fermented cold.

NCYC 679

Saccharomyces pastorianus

Pre 2011 Name
Saccharomyces pastorianus

Depositor
O. Bendova, Prague

Deposit Date
January 1966

Habitat
Lager production strain from Bratislava brewery.

[dannyjed]

The one time I tried Diamond Lager Yeast it ended up a complete diacetyl bomb. Granted, I only pitched one pack into 1.056 wort which would be under-pitching. Nothing I did could salvage this beer and I dumped it. Maybe I should give it another try and pitch more yeast. W-34/70 has worked fine for me the times that I have tried it, but like others have noted it took a long time to clear.

[Bel Air Brewing]

I was a die hard fan of anything from Wyeast. That was the only yeast I used...until W-34/70 and S-04 were found. Now I pitch 4th, 5th, 8th generations of this yeast, with spectacular results.

Dry yeast today is light years ahead of where it was a decade ago. And I was a liquid yeast "snob" in a previous life.

[Saccharomyces]

W-34/70 has worked fine for me the times that I have tried it, but like others have noted it took a long time to clear.

Therein, lies one of the big red flags with this culture for me because the reference culture, W-34/70, is not powdery.  It is flocculent.  That means the Fermentis W-34/70 has to be a mutant.  It may not start out that way as a seed culture, but mutation is definitely occurring under aerobic propagation under the Crabtree threshold in a bioreator at Fermentis, that is, if Fermentis W-34/70 is actually W-34/70.

Fermentis W-34/70 fits the W-34/78 fermentation profile more so than the W-34/70 profile, but even then, W-34/78 is not powdery.  Below is a link to downloadable PDF that is the document for TUM 34/70 and TUM 34/78, which are W-34/70 and W-34/78.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwi8_5zh5bPvAhXeFlkFHUz1AQ8QFjAAegQIARAD&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.blq-weihenstephan.de%2Ffileadmin%2Fpdf%2FMikroorganismen%2FHefen_En%2FFrisinga___Proles.pdf&usg=AOvVaw0H0jirQzCv70AZnGk37OSz

What is a "powdery" yeast strain?  Well, it is a yeast strain that has lost its ability to flocculate.  A lot of people confuse flocculation with sedimentation.  Even non-flocculent yeast strains will eventually sediment.  They just take longer because they do not aggregate into flocs, which increases the rate of sedimentation.  Some yeast strains trap CO₂ gas when they aggregate.  The trapped CO₂ gas causes them to rise to the surface.  We refer to these strains as true top-croppers.

By the way, the English translation of the acronym TUM is Technical University of Munich.  The TUM school of life sciences is located on the Weihenstephan campus.

[Saccharomyces]

I was a die hard fan of anything from Wyeast. That was the only yeast I used...until W-34/70 and S-04 were found. Now I pitch 4th, 5th, 8th generations of this yeast, with spectacular results.

Dry yeast today is light years ahead of where it was a decade ago. And I was a liquid yeast "snob" in a previous life.

I bet that if you spent any appreciable amount of time brewing with cultured yeast that was propagated from a single colony on a plate or a slant that was propagated from a single colony on a plate, your opinion would be differentt.  I pick up on things with liquid strains that other people miss and they are significantly less off-flavor prone than dry yeast.  I have picked up on off-flavors from every modern day dry yeast culture. BRY-97 has come the closest to matching liquid.  Most people would not believe how much cleaner cultured yeast can be than dry yeast or even commercial liquid yeast.  It is what kept me maintaining a yeast bank on agar slants all of those years.  It is why the bigger craft brewers who can afford a quality lab brew with cultured yeast. One does not have hold a fermentation at an artificially low temperature with cultured yeast to achieve a clean product.  Cultured yeast is better behaved.

[Silver_Is_Money]

Dry yeast today is light years ahead of where it was a decade ago. And I was a liquid yeast "snob" in a previous life.

This mirrors my situation to a tee.  Before I took a roughly 15 year home brewing sabbatical I was a 100% user of liquid yeast.  Since I returned to brewing about 5 years ago I've been using about 90% dry yeast and 10% liquid yeast. 

[dmtaylor]

To cause more confusion and arguments, I’ll just set this here.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/16XRUloO3WXqH9Ixsf5vx2DIKDmrEQJ36tLRBmmya7Jo/edit?usp=sharing

[Village Taphouse]

Some of this may also just come down to personal taste, right?  I know some brewers who are very, very good and meticulous brewers so I assume their process is good.  But they might use a yeast strain (say Omega Bayern) and come back later and say that they just don't like this yeast.  Could that be the case with 34/70 too?  I'll admit that I rarely use dry yeast.  That run of Diamond beers I made was a complete fluke but I liked the beer and the yeast was performing well.  Typically I have Omega Bayern, WLP940, WY2124 or WY2308/WLP838 running here.  The dry yeast is usually just for emergencies or spontaneous brewing.

[denny]

I made a long string of lagers with Diamond one summer (2019?) and honestly didn't want to throw it away.  I don't remember how many batches I made but it was a good 8-10.  2124 is one of my favorite lager strains and I'm about to start it up here for summer beers.  I don't know that I would say that Diamond and 2124 are closely related although the beer was very good and the yeast performed well... good attenuation and an ability to drop bright.  I have 34/70 in my yeast fridge at the moment but I have NEVER tried it.  I also like S-189 (although it has less character to me than Diamond) and S-23.  The comment above about S-23 being the Urquell strain surprises me.  I should probably try it again.

Genetically they are very closely relatedl but since they're different forms from different companies, there will be differences.   No different than US05/001/1056