Did I over pitch?

I have about 6 gals of 1.080 OG currently fermenting, brewed on Saturday…Krausen going out the blow off tube, never had such a large Krausen.

So, used 4 paks of hydrated SafAle US-05 because I used a yeast pitch calculator and took the number of cells per pak straight from the Fermentis site which gave it at  6 x 10(ninth power)…60B cells…and 4 paks was under pitching according to the calculator.  Did I over-pitch?

I control the temp…it did get up to 69F by Monday but eased it down to 68 and now at 67, so been in 2 degree range, no drastic changes.
It does seem to be slowing some, as it always does by the Wednesday after brewing on Saturday.

Also, with all the krausen in the blowoff tube and overflow container it went in…can I just leave that in place for the duration of the fermenting(2-weeks) or should it be cleaned?  Paranoid about contamination, as I am sure the water in the blow off jug will have stuff in it.  Concerned that it can climb its way up the krasen coated tube and make into the wort when the fermentation is about done and not off-gassing?

and wanted to add that I just had tap water in the blow-off jug, no santizer

Thanks for any responses.

One pack would be enough for 6 gallons. Not sure what calculator you were using. Normally over pitching is ok, but I don’t have experience with 4x the amount.

The blow off tube should be ok as long as you don’t create a suck back situation. I would change out the dirty water because having not used any type of sanitizer, bad things could grow in it. I always start with a blow off tube and then switch to an airlock after a few days when I’m sure there’s no risk of volcanoes and always use sanitizer.

I think I would have pitched ~two packs of -05 in 6 gal of 1.080 wort.

The Fermentis general rule of .5-.8 grams per liter for Ales applied to your situation: .8 x 22 liter = 17.6 grams yeast. I’d give it the higher .8 grams per liter due to your higher gravity. I would have probably vacuum sealed the remaining 4.4 grams and stored it in the fridge until next brew. …but I could see just using both packs as well and made it an even 1 gram per liter.

I use a blowoff tube in a jar of water every beer I brew from start to finish. I’ve never have anything crawl back into the fermenter from the jar of blowoff material. Contamination simply doesn’t work that way.

Do not cold crash your beer with that setup in place and you’ll be fine as long as the hose doesn’t get clogged with blowoff material.  I’ve had that happen once with small ID hose so I moved to 1/2” ID hose.

I used the Brewer’s Friend pitch calculator. (6 gals, 1.08 OG, Pro Brewer .75 target pitch rate, dry packets, 11.5 G)

329B cells was the result.

I am missing something on how this all works…fermentis gives a 6B cells per gram technical spec on the US-05, or 69B cells per packet.  How does one or possibly 2 packets of this come close to the pitch rate needed?

This is rather confusing…

I use this information from Fermentis: Fermentis - Yeast and fermentation solutions for beverages where they recommend .5-.8 per liter for Ales (below).

I don’t use third party yeast calculators.

Just brewed my RIS yesterday, 20.4 degrees Plato (1.085), and used two packs of S-04 in a 5.5 gallon batch.  Normally for a lower gravity beer, one pack is enough.  I think that 4 packs was overdoing it but as far as over-pitching, you should be OK except for the fact that you spent more money on yeast than you had to.  I agree with Brewbama on using the manufacturer’s pitching recommendations as they produce the yeast and have done extensive testing on pitching rates.

The last time I made this beer a couple months ago, I had krausen blowing out of the blowoff tube but didn’t lose more than an aounce or two of beer.

I agree that 2 packs would have been more than sufficient.  Kinda backs up Mark’s comments about pitch calculators.

One pack would have been plenty.  Two packs would have been high end of normal or low end of overpitch.  Four packs, OMG, major overkill.

Fermentis lies.  They want to sell more yeast, AND they don’t want complaints about yeast that is seriously mistreated by shippers & sellers that is near death on arrival.  So they set their estimates way lower than their actual ~220B cells per pack.

Any proof the the allegation they do it to sell more yeast?

Um… they are selling a product?  Any edge is an edge, regardless of whether any human being on earth will actually admit to it out loud.  It is what it is.  I guess I don’t mean to infer they are any more evil than any other company.  I consider myself a realist, moreso than a pessimist.  If I were running a business (which I am not), I’m sure I would accept any freebie edges that I was sure I could get away with.  Otherwise I might not be so good at running a business.  Fortunately for everybody, I am far too lazy to have any plans on opening any businesses in my lifetime.

Like it or not, that’s the way I picture reality.  Today, anyway.  Tomorrow, who knows.  I am not afraid to change my opinions and assertions if/when further evidence suggests that I should do so.  I have and I will, if appropriate.  Cheers.  :slight_smile:

So that’s a no?  :wink:

I have used the “one pack is plenty” approach and experienced sluggish performance such as slow start, lethargic ferment, and poor attenuation — sometimes just one or two indicators in one beer and sometimes all three.

So, I began reading and found more often than not I was under pitching according to the mfr recommendations. Another thing I was doing at the time was sprinkling on top vs Direct Pitch (as described in the Tips and Tricks document in post #5 above).

Both mfr recommendations (pitching rate and pitching technique) seemed to make a difference for me …but I know some folks don’t have these symptoms. In that case no cure is required.

I image the mfr does want to ensure their customers are happy (so they will continue to be customers), therefore they provide a recommendation on how to best use their products.  I don’t think they grossly overstate that recommendation simply to make a buck, but there’s probably some conservative estimates baked in to account for uncontrollable variables after the product enters the supply chain.

Don’t recall if I posted this yet, but I brewed 12 gal. of 1.049 Vienna lager.  Split it into 2 6 gal. batches and pitched one pack of Diamond lager into one, 2 packs in the other.  Just poured it on top, no special procedures.  The 2 pack started in one day, the one pack in 2 days.  Both finished at the same time, same FG, and taste identical.

I like to live on the edge, and I would not pitch a single pack into six gallons 1.080 wort, especially without first re-hydrating the yeast in boiled and cooled water.  One is facing a double whammy with high-gravity wort; namely, high osmotic pressure and a lower oxygen saturation level.  Table 1 on page 255 of the PDF linked below provides O2 saturation levels at different gravities and temperatures.  At 20C (68F), a 1.040 wort has an O2 saturation level of 6.2 ppm where a 1.080 wort has an O2 saturation level of 4.9 ppm.  Now, we are able to skirt the dissolved O2 saturation level problem with dry yeast because dry yeast cells are ready to go when pitched.  However, we cannot get around the osmotic pressure problem.  Rehydrating cells with water leads to a 50% higher viability rate,which we need when pitching into high gravity wort because a lot of cells are going to shrivel and implode.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/j.2050-0416.1974.tb03614.x

Well, I will try to remember to come back to this and let you all know how it turns out in a month or so.

Thanks for the input…guess I will just use one or two packs in the future.

Regardless of the number of packs you pitched,  the beer will be just fine. I probably would have pitched 2 packs at that gravity, but a factor of 2 difference with a yeast pitch isn’t a huge deal.

For those of you who may like to know.  This stout turned out very well.  I let it stay in the ferment vessel for 3 weeks with a final gravity 1.022 ABV 7.6%.  I thought the final gravitiy would end up lower, but that is ok and was in the expected range for the final gravity.  I bottle, and used 4.8 oz of primer sugar for a little under 6 gals.  Nice head, very drinkable.

That is a very good document and your results speak for themselves.  However, I would like to discuss something that is covered in the document under the “Quality Control” section.

As I have mentioned many times and covered in great deal in my blog entry entitled “Yeast Cultures are Like Nuclear Weapons” (Yeast Cultures are Like Nuclear Weapons | Experimental Brewing), pitching rates are more about out-competing competitors than anything else.  Granted, in high gravity beer, we have the double whammy of lower O2 absorption and higher osmotic pressure that requires us to pitch higher cell counts due to the increased difficulty of growing biomass combined with increased premature cell death due to high osmotic pressure, but most fermentations are not high-gravity fermentations.  A pitching rate of 50G/hl equates to a per gallon pitching rate of 50 / 26.4 (gallons in hecto liter) = 1.89 grams.  For the typical 5.5 gallon starting wort volume, that equates 5.5 * 1.89 = 10.4 grams, which is why the dry sachet size is 11 grams (the metric equivalent of the 5-gallon batch is 24 liters, which is 6.3 U.S. gallons, so 11 grams is still good enough).  When pitched at this rate, what prevents a fermentation from fully attenuating is a combination of strain genetics, wort composition, and dissolved O2 demand.  Let’s face it, a lot of amateur brewers are aeration challenged.  In poorly aerated wort, it is not the pitching rate that controls fermentation, it is a yeast strain’s genetically programmed O2 demand.  I have previously covered Brian Kirsop’s work on O2 demands from his seminal paper on the subject entitled “OXYGEN IN BREWERY FERMENTATION” (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/j.2050-0416.1974.tb03614.x), but here are the O2 classes from that paper again:

Class O1 - yeasts whose oxygen requirement is satisfied if wort is half saturated with air
Class O2 - yeasts whose oxygen requirement is satisfied if wort is saturated with air
Class O3 - yeasts whose oxygen requirement is satisfied by oxygen-saturated wort
Class O4 - yeasts whose oxygen requirement is not satisfied by oxygen-saturated wort

That being said, I believe that the most popular yeast strains in amateur brewing fall into the O1, O2  O2 demand range, which means that most have O2 demands that can be met by saturation with air.  For example, below is the strain information for NCYC 1026, which is the Whitbread B strain.  We know this strain as Wyeast 1098, White Labs WLP007, and Fermentis S-04. We see that the strain has an O2 demand of O2.  We also see that it has above taste threshold lactic acid production, which is why beers that have been fermented with it have a tart edge.  What most brewers do not understand, it that this yeast strain did not make its mark in brewing in batch-based fermentation.  While the strain was deposited in 1958, it made its mark in the mid-sixties with A.P.V. continuous tower fermentation vessels, which are basically bioreactors designed for continuous beer production. I suspect that the reason why this yeast strain does so well when propagated in a bioreactor is because it did so well in A.P.V. continuous tower fermentation, which means that it probably comes out a bioreactor with enough ergosterol and unsaturated fatty acid (UFA) stores that it is almost insensitive to wort dissolved O2 level.

NCYC 1026

Information
  Flocculent
NewFlo type flocculation.
      1:5:4:5:5
      O2, DMS 33 µg/l, low acetic, high lactic (which is why the strain produces slightly tart beers),
      diacetyl 0.42ppm only, used commercially in Tower Fermenters (continuous process),
      non head-forming, no estery flavour. Contains 2µ plasmid.
Depositor
  British Brewery
Deposit Name
  Saccharomyces cerevisiae
Month of deposit
  June
Deposit Year
  1958
Habitat
  Ale production strain.

Continuing, most of us have experienced long fermentation onset times with BRY-97.  Is that because we underpitched?  Or is it because we did not bother to aerate the wort?  Could it be that the long delay in the onset of active fermentation is the result of BRY-97s inability to come out of bioreactor-based propagation with fully-charged ergosterol and UFA reserves?  Or is it that the strain suffers high cell death in the drying process? Could it be that the isolate has higher O2 demands than its parent BRY-96? Or are we just spoiled by isolates of BRY-96 that work faster than the original? On the Siebel spreadsheet that I received from Lallemand, BRY-96 is labeled as having a fermentation progress of “slow.”  How many people consider Wyeast 1056, White Labs WLP001, or US-05 to be slower performing than other cultures?  Finally, why does BRY-97 act normally when it is repitched? Is it because we are pitching a much higher number of cells? Or is it because we are aerating the wort?  Granted, higher pitching rates do reduce the need for aeration, at least, for one serial re-pitch.  Maybe, I will get around to running an experiment where I highly aerate wort before pitching a single pack of BRY-97.

All great insights.  If you do decide to run tests on Bry-97, here is my data point:

When I drain my BK, I run it thru a fine mess strainer in an attempt to catch trüb and foam the wort.  I fill the cone or a bit more of the FV and stop.  I then literally dump the yeast and Fermax into the wort. I don’t sprinkle it on top.

I then continue to fill the FV thru the strainer to the 5.5 gal mark creating more turbulence and foam. I then throw the TILT floating hydrometer in and install the lid.

I use a blow off tube attached to the lid via an elbow with the tag end place in a half filled pint jar of Iodophor/water mix. I can just about set my watch by the first ‘blip’ I see on the data log. I see that first blip at 16 +/- 2 hrs just like clockwork.

To get my pitch rate, I use the Lallemand Pitch Rate Calculator. Below is a screen shot of my last brew. I pitched 13 grams and the first ‘blip’ was logged at 14 hrs after I pitched the yeast.

3bde8855573d4d9ff033141657170d30.jpg

Most of my Bry-97 beers finish fermenting in ~ 5 days.  I’ll close transfer to a CO2 purged keg fitted with floating dip tube and cold crash under CO2 pressure for at least 3 days — longer if I don’t have an open serving spot. Once I move it to the serving spot I tap it, fine it, pull a cloudy pint, and the next day pour crystal clear beer.

While I find all this theory intriguing all I really care about is how the beer tastes. And my experience is that any lag in BRY-97 does not impact flavor.