will one Vile make due

I recommend not putting too much faith into that one statement. I would bet the vast majority of craft brewers would say that it's better to slightly overpitch than to slightly underpitch. And I would agree with them.

 

I agree, but it was interesting since I have never really heard that side of the argument before. I'm not saying it's convinced me

 

Strain dependent, sure.. esters are what you go for. You can tinker with the results, but honestly in homebrewing there are so many variables from batch to batch, it's a moving target to get an idea of what pitching 100B less cells did.

Err on the highside has always been my mantra.

 

English breweries underpitch by US standards. Maybe in the 2/3 to 1/2 rate, and the beers are estery.

 

Kind of true... Under/over pitching is kind of subjective since everyone has different philosophies in regards to pitching rates. Personally, I use different pitching rates for different styles. For my hoppy beers, I go down to about .5 million cells per ml/degree plato and I ferment cool with 1056 (60 degrees to start and 65 midway through fermentation). For most other ales, I use .75 million cells, unless the gravity is about 16 degrees plato in which case I go up to 1 million. Or, if it is a hoppy beer above 16 degrees, I go to .75 million. For lagers I do 1 million for lower gravity beers and 1.5 for higher gravity, but for my Pilsener with Augustiner yeast, I used 1.25 million for 14 degrees Plato. For our Kolsch, I use a "hybrid" pitching rate in between what I would normally do for an ale or lager.

I personally don't like to overpitch particularly if I am going to reuse the yeast. I have found that over pitched beers typically lack the esters that I like, and I believe for that reason that they taste/feel thinner even though the terminal gravity is the same. The other thing is that beers with different pitching rates age very differently and the differences will make themselves apparent very quickly in side by side tests, even if the two beers tasted very similar on day 1.