Newbie here with a question post-first batch. I read Palmers how to brew, and he talks frequently about rehydrating yeast. When I went to my local homebrew store to get supplies, the guy working gave me a pack of S-05 dry ale yeast and told me just to sprinkle the yeast over the wort. I'm a bit confused about how necessary the rehydration is for dry yeast, or at least the yeast I used. Have things changed since Palmer wrote in current online version? Am I risking or missing anything by just sprinkling the dry yeast and not rehydrating? My current beer is bubbling away, so things seem to be working ok, just wondering if I should do things differently for batch 2. Thanks in advance for any insight.
Either way works just fine, but; rehydration wakes the yeast up. Follow the packaging directions or the cut sheet PDF from Fermentis.
this one has really been beaten to death most recently. http://www.beeradvocate.com/community/threads/rehydrating-dry-yeast.371480/ only fools skip rehrydrating. so say I. one other thing, be suspect of all advice from your LHBS until they have proven to be reliable. not all are misinformed but plenty are.
I have used dry and just sprinkled over wort a few times and saying the beer is less than 1.060 OG I don't see it being such an issue. It is very simple to rehydrate though, so to make it a common practice isn't such a bad idea! Cheers
I think the general consensus is that under ideal circumstances, rehydrating will result in a better life cell count. However, as a practical matter, sprinkling dry yeast works just fine for most beers, and it's much easier. Sprinkle dry if it works for you, and don't let anyone shame you into doing otherwise.
Thanks all. Appreciate the link, I hadn't found that one in my searches. I know my LHBS is trying to keep my training wheels on, but I intend to take this seriously and want to know the best practices, not just "what I should do to keep it simple." Will give some give rehydrating a shot on my next batch. Going to assume I should sterilize the water by boiling the water first (sans yeast), then rehydrating at the optimal temp. Seems like all this should happen no more than 30 mins before pitching.
No argument there! If someone could point to just one study - hell, I'd even defer to anecdotal evidence - that rehydrating produces consistently better beer, I might reevaluate my position on this issue. As it is, the only observed difference in the outcome was a string of failures cited by Dan Listermann that, it was speculated, resulted from rehydrating incorrectly. IOW, the failures were caused by the brewers' decision to rehydrate the yeast. 'Best practice' is defined by businessdictionary.com as "A method or technique that has consistently shown results superior to those achieved with other means". Since rehydrating dry yeast has never been shown to do this, it doesn't qualify as 'best practice'. I'm in the 'keep it simple' camp, particularly when giving advice to a brewer who is just starting. There are enough things to obsess over without piling on other variables that will likely not affect the outcome in a positive way. But I'm not hard headed on this issue. I simply reject the hard headedness of those on the other side who insist rehydrating is necessary to make consistently excellent beer, when all the evidence suggests it's, at best, inconsequential. Rehydrate, if you like, or pitch it dry. It's up to you. I'm not going to label you a fool for choosing what you think works best for you. As I've said many times, peace of mind is a real thing. If rehydrating brings you nothing but that, then that's a valid reason to do it.
