+1
Interesting stuff; for those curious the relevant statement starts at about 19:30 in the podcast.
I’m really interested to hear more about the E2U products. I can’t say that I’m on top of the state of the art in dried yeast but this seems to be the first mention of a fundamentally new process.
Edit: OK, maybe I’m going all Costner in JFK here, but I can’t find anything online about E2U. Actually, I can’t find a single official reference to it as anything other than “the E2U direct pitching procedure”. Always the complete phrase. Basically, I don’t doubt this is a new procedure, I’m just trying to find some evidence it’s a new product.
Early in the page the OP linked it says: “To permit a good resistance to rehydration, the yeast is coated with a protective agent (most times the vegetal emulsifier sorbitan monostearate (MSS)) just prior to drying.” The article and podcast both refer to the yeasts they tested (E2U) showing no loss of viability or vitality in DP. They don’t, I grant you, seem to offer a direct comparison to anyone else’s product and I don’t know if others use similar processes. I expect more info to come, Fermentis seem to be on tour with this, as it were. But heck, why not just try a DP yourself and see how it goes? I understand you want data, but we drink beer, not numbers. What works, works.
Fair enough; I’ll pick up a couple packs and do some new counts.
I know you’ll report back. But if you’re doing a side-by-side, tracking fermentation and sensory analysis will be interesting. It’s just possible the counts are a red herring. (I’m thinking of the arguments pertaining to vitality starters.)
EDIT and full disclosure, I’ve never tried the vitality method, always been a conventional, pitch-rate obsessed brewer. But I keep finding myself surprised these days.
I’ll try to get a decent sized triangle test together as well; the problem is I’m adjacent to the middle of nowhere and I know my own palate is wrong often enough that I won’t trust it for that kind of thing.
And I can definitely relate to rethinking the pitching rate obsession; I massively under pitched a batch recently and while there are definite differences it’s far from undrinkable (have a pint in hand now, in fact).
Further reading on Fermentis website (Q&A):
•They say that direct pitching presents the potential for a maximum loss of viable cells of 3-6%.
•They also say that while the labelling/TDS gives a count of “>6B” viable cells/g, at packaging there are 10B viable cells/g.
Very helpful for determining a pitch rate. (Looks like I guessed my way into hitting it just about right anyway this time.)
In reality, unless one is seriously underpitching, wort does not need to be aerated when using dry yeast. Dry yeast is grown under aerobic conditions below the Crabtree threshold in a bioreactor. It is a very efficient way to propagate yeast cells because yeast cells produce more energy from the medium using the aerobic metabolic pathway instead of the anaerobic metabolic pathway. The bonus is that the cells come out of the bioreactor with fully charged ergosterol and unsaturated fatty acids reserves. The reason why we aerate wort is to provide O2 for the synthesization of these compounds during the lag phase.
…and this is why we missed you. Cheers!
Update: I figured out their suggestion of aeration was just a way of introducing agitation to mix in a commercial size fermenter. The alternative given is to fill the cone, wait 30 minutes, and fill the remainder. I did the aeration mixing method once, and on homebrew scale it is a useless (as Sacch. explains) complication. Rocking my Speidel does the trick.