Yeast Questions

Three hours is usually long enough to bring the yeast from fridge temps to a range where it's more functional. Longer than that probably won't hurt, unless you out for days.

After it's swollen, you want to use within a couple hours, but again, it's not super critical, unless you did something like smack it and then wait for week. That wouldn't be wise.

I don't think it makes much difference whether you aerate then pitch or pitch then aerate.

 

As long as the yeast was stored properly after smacking, there should be no issues with waiting a week. Smack Pack internal pouches break once in a while. Doesn't hurt a thing.

 

Assuming you did an extract brew here. When you pour from the boil pot into the fermenter make sure you let the wort splash. Then top off with water vigorously. Dump the trub from the pot and pour some back into the pot then back again into the fermenter. Pitch your yeast, put on the lid and shake for 45 seconds or so.
Done.

Palmer says....
http://www.howtobrew.com/section1/chapter9-1.html

 

Vikeman. I accidentaly grabbed the wrong yeast pack from the fridge last week. Smacked it. Realized my mistake about 20 minutes later then put it back into the fridge.

Good for 3 weeks in the fridge? Should I create a starter to be sure? Wont be a high gravity beer BTW...

 

It will be good in the fridge for as long as it would have been if you had never smacked it. Whether you'll need a starter or not depends on the gravity of the wort, the number of viable cells in the pack (which is partially a function of age), and the desired pitch rate. I use Mr. Malty rates...

http://www.mrmalty.com/calc/calc.html

 

Without knowing your wort gravity or the age of the yeast, it's impossible to say if your partial smackpack will be 'plenty.' Or rather, it's probably enough to make beer, but may not be ideal. Possible consequences of underpitching include...

- high esters
- high fusel alcohols
- under-attenuation
- high diacetyl
- high sulfur compounds (particularly in lagers)
- high acetaldehyde

I really recommend checking out the Mr. Malty site, both for the pitching calculator, and for the yeast articles there.

Relaxing and thinking are both good.

 

With 3711 I'm partially convinced you could drop one cell into the beer and it would be fermented out dry in 24 hours. I wouldn't worry too much with that beer unless you were trying to make a saison well into the single digits in ABV or higher.

 

The big thing is not to freak out on the second beer. More often than not the beer turns out pretty good despite our best efforts to the contrary. What you get wrong this time you can learn from for the next time. As VikeMan pretty much already said, you are still going to make beer, but even if you had pitched the whole packet it still probably would have been underpitching. That doesn't mean your beer won't come out alright. But that next step from pretty good to great comes from learning about starters, temp control, yeast health a host of other related factors and most importantly from repetition.

 

Are you familiar with the Mr Malty calculator? http://www.mrmalty.com/calc/calc.html

A lot of us use that because it saves us the trouble of doing the math to calculate the optimum pitch rate and the starter size needed to achieve it.

Note that this provides what we might call a ballpark figure. People pitch less (or more) and still get good, even excellent, beer. But Mr Malty's a good tool for knowing about what the pitch rate should be and how to get it.

 

It's pretty simple. Just make sure you use the drop down tabs (or whatever you call 'em) to select for the type of fermentation you're doing (probably ale for the time being), the OG, and the yeast production date. You can then see how much dry yeast or liquid you'll need with a simple starter (ie, just putting the yeast and starter wort in a container and leaving it alone) or intermittent shaking or a stir plate, which require less wort.

And, like they say, relax, don't worry, have a homebrew. Beer is a pretty tolerant product. You can make some mistakes and still have it turn out pretty good. Over time, most of us get to be kind of perfectionistic about really nailing OG, pitch rate, fermentation temp, etc. But you can still make good beer that first time out even if these things are all less than perfect.

 

I tried using Mr. Malty for the IPA I did last week. OG 1.06

It says 2L of starter. Seems like a lot of liquid to add to my ferementer.

 

If you plan ahead you can cold crash the yeast and decant the liquid off.

 

On what are you basing your expectation?

 

Are you guys choosing simple starter or intermittent shaking? The latter option is easy, just swirl it vigorously every hour or so to degas it and put the yeast back in suspension.

 

Before cutting open the smack pack and adding its contents, give it a good shake. I have forgotten to do this a couple times only to notice, as the package leaves my hands to enter the trash can, that I left globs of yeast clumps in the bottom corners.