I am going to do a Czech Pale Premium Lager next. I follow Mark’s strategy of using a large vessel to shake the wort/yeast and then pitch the lot into the fermenter ~6 hours later.
What is the thinking with lagers? My thought is to step it up with 4 iterations, i.e.: pitch a pack of yeast into a quart of wort, wait till it is finished fermenting that, decant and go again, timing the last for brew day.
It’s worked for me and others. The idea is to pitch when the yeast is in exponential growth. Underpitch by half and the issue is gone in 90min, under pitch by 4 and your are good at 3 hours.
I’m sure I’ll be corrected, but pitch rates are from slurry with no starter for commercial breweries that are simply pumping yeast from a brink.
For 6gal lager or ales or high gravity ales, i use 1 smack pack on 1200ml oxygenated starter made morning of brew day, run at main beer pitching temp, pitch the whole thing that night. Massive ales get extra oxygen. I used to use two starters for lagers but found it’s not necessary.
Welcome. When I do lagers I chill my canned 1.040 in my fermentor chest to 50F the night before. So on brew day the yeast goes from fridge to 50F starter to 50F main beer. At about 50% ADF I pull the temp probe from the beer to ambient and bump the chest temp to 68F. Letting the beer free rise to 68 ambient. This works reliably for me.
I do that exact thing for my ales. I just don’t do many lagers… and none since I started doing the ‘shaken not stirred’ method. Now I just wish I could find some Wyeast 2001.
WLP800 is also Urquell H-strain, same as WY2001. I think I recall LHBS said the Wyeast is either being discontinued or shifted to a specialty, not always available
EDIT Checked their site, it’s now Private Collection, the limited release line
I only do a couple lager brew days a year anymore. So I was looking for a quality all-around yeast, focusing on Bavarian styles but capable of doing well with pils and occasionally an American. I’ve tried several and finally landed on 2352. But it’s a PC, so I learned to plate and slant, which was fun for a while. I kept hearing people sing praise about 2206 so I tried it and BOOM. I never looked back
Jim, I’m wondering if my experience is typical to yours.
I brewed the beer Thursday, 4/26/18. Pitched yeast @ 21:30, at 50*. One pack of Wyeast 2206, dated 3/31/18, in Shaken not Stirred method (one Qt. wort). Which was started at ~12:00… maybe a bit late?
First airlock activity today (4/28) 09:00. ~36 hours.