Practical yeast starting and pitching

Great Video: http://billybrew.com/stepping-up-a-yeast-starter
It has a great chart from the book yeast and explains how to use it along with the Mr. Malty Yeast Calculator. Easy and free way to figure out yeast count needed. Pitching active and healthy yeast at the right quantities will vastly improve the quality of your beer. http://www.mrmalty.com/calc/calc.html

 

A number of BAs are advocates of the yeast calculator on the Mr. Malty website: www.mrmalty.com. That yeast calculator will tell you what ‘size’ of a yeast starter is needed for the ‘variables’ of:

· Ale vs. lager
· Original Gravity
· Age of the yeast (liquid yeast)
· Etc.

I am personally of the opinion that the yeast calculator on Mr. Malty is a very conservative estimator. I personally follow the recommendations from the yeast vendors (e.g., Wyeast, White Labs).

For example, from the Wyeast web site:

“6. Do I need to make a starter for an Activator?

No. The Activator is designed to deliver professional pitch rates (6 million cells/ ml.) when directly added to 5 gallons of wort. ( <1.060 at 70 degrees). However, if a package is slow to swell, suspected of being mishandled, or if the date is approaching the six month shelf life it is a good idea to build the culture up with a starter. High gravity or low temperature fermentations require higher pitch rates. This can be achieved with inoculating with additional packages or making a starter.”

There is no denying that more yeast cells is ‘better’ and therefore lots of folks recommend that a yeast starter be made for almost every batch of beer. Each homebrewer needs to decide for themself how many yeast cells are needed for their homebrew batches.

Cheers!

 

High quality yes, LHBS (no turnover in my area) due to prices of online retailers that blow LHBS away.

I'd rather pitch too much than not enough (too much to a reasonable amount - not like 3 vials in a 1.060 beer). A healthy fermentation is better than a lagging one and if it involves a blow off tube - great! I have only need a blowoff tube once an it was an Impy Stout in my 6.5gal glass carboy. I did a 2L yeast starter and stepped it up with another 2L yeast starter and the batch needed a blowoff tube the morning after (under 8 hours later).

Other than that 1 time I have never needed a blowoff even with starters but always have one ready to go just incase.

 

Use the Mr. Malty calculator. And select the 'intermittent shaking' option from the dropdown (unless you happen to have a stirplate). Pretty straight forward. I promise you will get better results than by following any random advice such as 'below x.xxx OG you don't need a starter.'

 

Overpitching tends not to create that sort of issue from my understanding (unless it is massively so, whereby you aren't using a pitching rate calculator).

 

Use a starter you'll get better beer. Mr malty is good, I prefer yeastcalc.com just because I like the interface more. I feel that proper pitching, temperature control and cleanliness makes great beer. After all brewers don't make beer, we just make wort.

 

Don't be afraid of bombs! Just get a blowoff tube with a large enough ID and you should be fine.

 

I also advocate the Mr. Malty calculator. However, when I do make a starter for a typical beer (anywhere from 1.045 - 1.070) I usually just make a half gallon one and call it good without using the calculator since that's usually enough or more than enough.

 

I have never did yeast starter and have never have fail fermentation, I know some of you put alot on starting the yeast. I suspect that many practices are reminder from the old days of homebrew, for our matter yeast quality was relatively low.
In my short experience I learn that dry yeast don't need to be rehydrate (but i do)
Starting my recycled yeast is very simple, I let two yeast portion out from the fridge, by finish chilling the wort, the yeast are already in room temperature ready to pour it in to the carboy, add some chilled wort, close it and give two minute shake and you ready to go.
In case of smack pack, smack it 3 hours before the wort is chilled.
That's a good example on how far can well done video can go

 

Fermentation is arguably the most important factor in determining the flavor profile of you beer. I'd suggest that you learn the most that you can about it.

One thing that's never brought up in these threads is how, which corresponds to how much oxygen is introduced back into your wort. If you haven't done any research into this, or if your making a big beer and not adding pure O2 your probably not providing enough O2. This means that there won't be the cell reproduction that was assumed that would take place, so our calculated results will be low - here it's best to over pitch.

It's also a good idea to get your yeast started before pitching. With a WYeast pack all that you have so to do is smack the back. With White Labs your have to take to same approach as a starter, to feed the cells a 1.030-1.040 wort. It's just in this case if you don't want to propagate you don't need to aerate.

All in all this is a very forgiving process. Things will pretty much always work to some degree.

 

Here's interesting test regarding the benefit of Aeration Oxygenation before fermentation.

 

Yes, I've posted the longer version and never got any feedback from the group.

So what's you take-away from that clip?

 

Nice video, but too bad they left out the best method of oxygenation: bottled o2 thru the stone. This method is much better than the aquarium pump method and is supreme to any other method available to homebrewers.

 

Bobby did make another video w/pure O2. I can see it on the right side, 6:12 in length. But I can't play it, I get a message like he used copy written music.

 

Here is some good information.

 

This video uses http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOrfmzpDmPk condoms and not balloons, pure O2

 

Here's the thing: this experiment has so many limitations.

1) Yeast growth uses oxygen, but if you pitch enough healthy yeast you don't need that much growth. I'm not sure the ratio needed for a 1 gal batch, but my instinct tells me that you don't need that much healthy yeast.

2) There are no temperature probes in this video and we have no idea if these are all at the same internal temperature (temperature makes a huge difference in yeast activity).

3) The brewer did not measure dissolved O2 levels in any of these vessels. That's the only true way of knowing how much O2 you have in the wort.

4) We were not given the final FG nor tasting notes on these beers.

5) WE WERE NOT GIVEN THE FINAL FG NOR TASTING NOTES ON THESE BEERS!!!!

And the reason I repeat item #4 is because that is the parameter that we are truly after, i.e. how will oxygenation affect the final quality of my beer?

There's a reason that breweries across the globe oxygenate their wort. It has to do with yeast growth, which produces characteristic beer flavor, and a healthy fermentation.