Which book? In German Wheat Beer he states pitching rate should be 10-15m/ml on page 71, and again on page 97.
FWIW he also says you should experiment with fermentation parameters to dial in the flavor you want, but he only lists stuff like temp, open/closed vessels, and wort gravity. He doesn’t suggest the pitching rate is one of the variables you should adjust.
For anyone interested, here’s an experiment Kai did on this topic: Experiment Pitching Rate and Oxygenation - German brewing and more
hmm…
Thought it was German Wheat Beer—definitely in Brewing With Wheat—the part where he talks about Franziskaner (also, possibly, in the section on New Glarus—I’ll double check all these sources when I get home tonight).
In any event, when I did my 20E6/mL vs 6E6/mL I emailed Wyeast and it jived with some experiments they did. Hopefully, they won’t mind me posting the text in the entirety (hopefully no one on this thread mind, too :))Text below:
Tyler - Interesting Q&A with Wyeast. I need to think about that for a little bit before I can form an opinion.
Re: the pitching rate in Brewing with Wheat here’s what I found, emphasis mine:
German Brewing literature suggest pitching 4-7 million cells per ml in brewing a standard Bavarian hefeqeizen. Schneider currently pitches 7m in Weisse Original, a 12.8P beer, although brewmaster Drezler and lab technicians were exploring a plan in the fall of '09 to boost that rate. “You’ve got to be careful when talking about pitching rates” Said Dan Carey at New Glarus Brewing. “Are you talking about sending in 5 million little old ladies from a rest home or 5 million soldiers ready for battle? Until you calculate the vitality of the yeast, that number doesn’t mean much.” Carey pitches 7m/ml in Dancing Man (16P) and 5m/ml in Crack’d (13.5*P), however he has a yeast propagator and knows he is putting particularly vital yeast to work, as does Schneider.
In fact, very high and very low pitching rates increase ester production. The danger of underpitching is creating higher rates of ethyl acetate, the solventy character best described as nail polish remover and a bad complement for clovy phenols in a weizen.
Very interesting info on pitching rates. In actuality, this is likely more important than decoction versus step mashes versus single infusion. In your opinions then, how many healthy yeast cells do I want to pitch into a 5.5gal batch for optimum ester formation?
For kicks, I went to recipe Wiki and looked up the NHC hefe winners since 2004. Two used decoction; one, single infusion.
Regarding decoction now, I copied this from the 2009 winner:
“Dough-in at 111° F (44° C) and hold for 15 minutes. Ramp up to 131° F (55° C), and rest 10 minutes. Pull thick decoction and slowly heat to 158° F (70° C), and rest 20 minutes. Boil 10 minutes, stirring constantly. Meanwhile, ramp main mash up to 149° F (65° C) and hold. Recombine, and equalize at 158° F (70° C). Rest for 10 minutes. Mash out at 170° F (77° C). Sparge, collecting 7 gallons (26.5 L). Chill to 58° F (14° C) before oxygenation and pitching.”
Since I mash in a 48qt cooler, would I want to dough in with a 1qt/lb water to grain ratio since I will be ramping up the temp to 131F…149F by direct infusion? How long would I hold the mash at 149F? Also, what portion of the mash would I pull to decoct? Thanks in advance. I can see I’m going to have to do some research before I decoct for the first time.
Wow… there is some great information here. If nothing else, it seems clear to me that there is a lot more to pitching rate than the generalization “Ales should be pitched at X and Lagers at Y”. And I’m sure yeast health/activity play a huge role as well.
Having said that, I will still be doing what Mr Malty or YeastCalc recommend 90% of the time. I will continue to pitch my weizens at a lower rate than my ales (I won’t call it underpitching at this point, because as far as those strains go, I’m not convinced that it is), and I may toy with a little bit of low pitching on certain Belgians as well.
I thinks it’s safe to assume that any yeast in your house will not be as vital as yeast from a propagator in a pro brewery. That’s probably true even if you have an active starter. There’s no easy way to test vitality that I know of.
sounds familiar
Geez, how’d I miss that, Gordon…
Care to address my decoction questions? Thanks.
You can dough in thick. I don’t measure but you can make it oatmeal-like. As long as all the grain is wet.
When I said “ramp”, I meant by direct firing while recirculating. You can infuse. Use brewing software to calculate how much to infuse.
Hold the mash at 149 until the decoction step is done. The decoction is timed but it is variable how long it takes to move between parts of that process. So just leave it at 149 until the decoction is done then remix.
I normally pull about 33-40% or so of the mash. The thick part but I take liquid too. Like getting soup from a big pot where you dig down and drag along the side to get the most good stuff. I usually pull more because it’s easier to drop a few degrees than raise.
So can someone put pitching rates into a context that a relatively new brewer can understand? I am brewing a bavarian hefe this week and from the sounds of things I want to pitch 3-6 million cells per mil for the flavor i am looking for. I plan to use wyeast 3068 smack pack dated 6/12.
Do i need a starter? I was just going to smack and pitch. It will be approx 5 gal 1.050.
Sorry for the hyjack but you guys got me thinking.
Hulk: From what I’ve read, you can get increased ester formation from over- and under-pitching. If you underpitch, you’re more likely to have increased fusel production, decreased head retention and lacing. “Standard” pitching rate is 1m/*Plato/ml. So for a 5 gallon, 1.050 batch, that’s 1m/12.5/20k ml. So it’d be about 250b cells total, for a “standard” pitching rate. 3m/ml would be 60b, 6m/ml would be 120b.
I wouldn’t recommend pitching that low. The pros that pitch 6-7m/ml are using very fresh, very healthy yeast which you don’t have access to.
Assuming your yeast wasn’t abused along the way, yeastcalc tells me your pack should have 69b viable cells, though I think their vitality would be quite low.
Brew smith calculates 96 bill cells for a smack pack dated 6/12 and the wyeast site states that 1 smack pack is necessary for a beer with an OG less than 1.060. If i understand correctly your are saying the yeast are not as viable as stated by these sources? The thing that confuses me is that both wyeast and brew smith are mostly inteded for homebrew use. Wyeast wouldnt mind if i had to buy 4 packs of yeast to make a good brew so i dont know what they stand to gain from saying i should buy 1 pack for a 1.050 beer.
Confused
Mr Malty and Yeastcalc both say 69% viability for a smackpack dated 6/12, recommend 1.75 billion cells, and recommend a 2.2-2.3 liter starter.
FWIW, my SOP for a 5-gallon batch of a ~1.050 weizen is to pitch 1 smackpack of WY3638 with no starter. With a fairly fresh smackpack, this equates to about 4-5 m/mL. When fermented at 65F, this yields a phenol/ester balance that I really enjoy. I’ve never noticed any fusels with this fermentation regime.
Having said that, just because I found a procedure for a specific yeast that suits my palate well doesn’t mean I’d recommend it empirically for everybody and for all weizen yeasts. In fact, with all the conflicting and/or inconclusive information that’s out there I will probably play with pitching rates with a weizenbock this winter to really dial in what suits my palate the best.
My recommendation would be to build a starter based on Mr Malty or YeastCalc’s recommended pitching rate, then use fermentation temperature to control your desired phenol/ester balance. I think this is most likely to put you in the ballpark of where you want to be. Then, if you want to tweak something like pitching rate you can do it on a future revision.
In my opinion, unless you setup to do step mashing easily, i.e. HERMS or RIMS, it’s more trouble than it’s worth. When I brewed my first hefeweizen, I employed a step mash, and it was a sloppy pain in a miss your numbers sort of way. Since then, I have done single infusion mashes at 152 fermented at 62 and have turned out many batches that have all of the good qualities I look for in a hefeweizen.
For what it’s worth, I tried Jamil’s very straightforward recipe and found it to be not the best I have made. I have made the Great Bavarian Weissbier project recipe from the NB forum on multiple occasions and have found that to be very good, particularly if you drop the carafa ii addition or even sub in about 2% Melanoidin malt for it.
As with anything, YMMV.
Jess Caudill at Wyeast recommends 6 million cells/ml for WY3068 to obtain optimum ester formation.
Who is she recommending that pitching rate for? Is that for the probrewer who buys a pitchable amount of yeast directly from Wyeast with 90%+ viability? Or for the homebrewer who is buying a month-old pack that sat in a fridge at the LHBS at what may or may not be the proper temp, then was shipped again or rode in the car to your house?
My point is the same as the one Dan Carey was making: are you pitching 6 million grannies, or 6 million soldiers?
Don’t know the answer to your question, but just wanted to point out that Jess is a ‘he’.
Jess was responding to my email, and knows I am a homebrewer.
Gordon, what do you think of Jess’s recommendation in light of “El Hefe”? By the way, thank you for your help in this thread.
On pitch rate? Honestly, I really don’t worry about it very much. I normally use one XL smack pack of 3068, and may or may not make a starter. When I make starters, I’m usually making a 1L one, so I’m more interested in getting the yeast active and ready to go than I am in getting a large cell count increase. I guess I’d agree that repitched 3068 seems to suck in comparison to fresh. I thought it was because the yeast was unstable (since the beer does seem to go off faster than other styles) but I’ll buy the cell count explanation.
There are a whole lot of variable that affect fermentation byproducts. Here’s a nuanced response from Clayton Cone regarding this topic:
and
http://www.danstaryeast.com/articles/need-yeast-growth
Also, I stand corrected re: ferulic acid rest. It does seem it has a big effect, compared to mashing in at a higher temperature: http://www.scientificsocieties.org/jib/papers/1996/1996_102_5_327.pdf