Hey folks, how you guys are?
What you been brewing?
So folks, I’m doing my first big beer, only 2,5 gallon each, next week, a Belgian dark strong ale and a clone from Midas touch with some changes, with 1,091 and 1,088, but I’m think doing a starter with a abbey 256 fermentis, a starter of 1,5 L (0.4 gallon), then pour 1l (0.26 gallon) in one and give the another 0,5 L (0.16 gallon) then propagation to 1 L (0.26 gallon) then pour in the other batch. I’m study about and I Know some people prefer buy 2 pack of the same yeast, but I’m curious about doing the propagation. Anyone try this already?
Overbuilding starters has been a well used technique for several years now. Making starters with dry yeast isn’t all that popular, but I’ve been doing it for some time with great results.
I don’t assume 200B cells per packet, but instead figure 10B per gram. This is the number I enter into the starter tool. Although it may not be necessary, I always rehydrate first. After rehydrating I treat the yeast just as I would liquid yeast.
My best starters for big beers are a smaller beer. Make a smaller OG beer around 1.040 - 1.045 (maybe up to 1.050) and the day you are ready to rack or bottle this one, brew your big beer and put it right on top of the small beers yeast cake.
Last year I counted S-23 and 34/70 out of curiosity. S-23 came in at 24b/gram and 34/70 at 21b/gram. Obviously that’s those packets of those strains, but it’s possible yours might have more than 10b/gram. Still, if making a starter makes good beer and you don’t mind doing it, who cares what your initial cell count is.
I have come to the point where I don’t care nearly as much about cell count as yeast health.
Yes. The nuclear bomb analogy by Mark V. comes to mind… if it’s vital and active, the cell numbers shouldn’t mean much. So no need to pitch huge starters, just use highly active ones.
Which is exactly what I’ve been doing the last few years. AAMOF, when I described the method to Chris White, he said “that’s great! Homebrewers are too hung up on numbers”
First of all thanks all for the answers, and now which size of starter would recommend to those bier? I’m think 0,26 to 0,4 gallon, but this will reduce my OG of the beer?
Well, what Denny is talking about is the Shaken Not Stirred method which is typically one quart of starter medium in a one gallon container. I would be curious to hear from Denny his thoughts on the size of a SNS starter when making a high gravity beer… 1.080 and up.
In that case, I make a lower gravity beer first and then use the slurry. But for a small 5 gal.batch, I think the usual SNS method would work.
How about for a 2.5-3 gallon batch of 1.080-1.100? Or higher?
I think I’d go for the standard SNS. Higher than 1.100…who knows. I don’t think I’d do that without slurry.
No starter is necessary. Just rehydrate, or direct pitch. I attended a Fermentis presentation at our LHBS and came away with this presentation. Check out page 24 for a comparison of pitching into various media, including rehydrating in water or wort. My results by direct pitching into big beers have been great. Hope the link works:
There is a three page “sponsored content”/scientific article from Fermentis about the new Easy to Use/E2U dry yeast in the September 2019 issue Brew Your Own magazine.
They don’t really talk about starters, but rather pitching directly vs. rehydrating the yeast in water vs. rehydrating the yeast in wort (which could be a starter, I guess). If you do make a starter, I wouldn’t follow the shaken not stirred method, based on this warning (emphasis theirs):
“there is no need to oxygenate the wort when using E2U yeast by Fermentis (due to our production process) and DO NOT shake the flask extremely vigorously when you are rehydrating the yeasts.”
Yup, this is consistent with what we were told by the Fermentis rep, the reason being that vigorous shaking or aeration during rehydration causes physical damage to the yeast cells, reducing overall viability of the pitch.
Both Fermentis and Lallemand now say no starter, no rehydration.
I’ve seen elsewhere that Lallemand is now again recommending in presentations not to do starters, but to rehydrate. Yet papers from 20+ years ago contradicted this. Very confusing.
I spoke wituu a biologist at Lallemand a few weeks ago. He said he didn’t know why they ever told people to rehydrate. I spent some time with Lallemand’s North American sales mgr. about a week ago and he said the same thing.
Screenshot of a posting elsewhere of a slide from a very recent ASBC/MBAA presentation. In case it’s illegible, it says best practice is rehydration in either sterile, salt-adjusted brewing water or diluted (2°-5°P) wort to avoid cytolytic shock. Sounds like ancient history, doesn’t it?
Meanwhile, studies have long shown that no matter how you pitch, the fermentation ends up at the same goal at the same time. Wonder if it’s not the same principle as vitality starters. Sure you kill some yeast, but what’s left is so dang healthy, who cares? I’ve always worried that rehydration could be counterproductive, because the delay involved could allow the dry yeast to consume all those wonderful reserves the production process endows them with before they get into the wort, disrupting their metabolism.
