I’m looking for best practices for weighing dry yeast. What do you do?
Yesterday, I co-pitched 5.5g Nottingham and 5.5g Windsor. I weighed them in a small sanitized glass bowl. The only problem was the bowl was wet. The yeast stuck to the bottom of the bowl and was quite difficult to pitch. I sat there rinsing and swirling trying to get the majority of the yeast into the wort. Luckily, I had sanitized the whole bowl, so I felt reasonably comfortable dipping into the wort repeatedly. On the other hand, I still worried about the cleanliness of the operation.
Next time, I will sanitize the bowl and then let it dry while covered to try and not pick up fungi from the air. Unless there are better ways…
Just use 70% iso and let it air dry upside down. Alcohol dries really fast due to its volatility. Also, as long as the bowl is clean and dry it is very unlikely you will contaminate anything.
I shape a small square of aluminum foil into a weight boat. Makes adding the yeast super easy as well; just shape the boat into a funnel.
No spray-sani needed–aluminum foil straight out of the roll is, for our purposes, completely sani’d. I use it whenever I need a sani’d surface to put something on or wrap something in. Of course, spray it if you want, but it is unnecessary.
When I want something sterile as opposed to just sanitary, I spray it with 90% isopropyl alcohol and set it ablaze. That means using a metal or Pyrex bowl. I used to use grain alcohol, but they outlawed the 95% stuff in my state.
I use a Pyrex ramekin wiped out with isopropyl. I don’t light it — just put a squirt in and swab it around with a paper towel as I am chilling. I turn it upside down and when I need it it’s dry. If I am using Brutzyme in that batch I use the now wet paper towel to wipe out the 1/2 tsp I’ll use for it as well. I just weight out my yeast and Fermax in the same ramekin and toss them in as the fermenter is filling. If a few grains of yeast hang on I don’t dip it in the wort.
5.5 g is half a pack. I just eyeball half a pack of each as I’m sprinkling, fold the packs back over, throw them in a baggie and put them back in the fridge. Honestly if you’re off by a gram or so in either direction I doubt it would make a difference. No need to break out a scale.
I also eye ball and sprinkle 1/2 of the pack into the fermenter. Then I weigh the remaining package on an accurate scale so I know how much yeast is left and vacuum seal and put it in the fridge.
Nice. Believe it or not I weigh nearly everything I eat. So, weighing stuff is second nature to me. But, I didn’t think about weighing before and after. In this case, I would tare the scale with the opened full pack on it and then weigh again and record the negated value after as the remaining yeast weight.
I do this all the time when I’m using Candi Syrup or Invert and don’t want to dirty another container. Tare, pour, weigh, repeat until I hit the amount I needed to add.