There is a person who posts on this site about how advanced the knowledge is on a particular modern brewing site that charges for access. However, the reality is that the data from that site is less useful than toilet tissue because it is mostly based on single data points. Data is not useful until it has passed peer review and has produced repeatable results. That is the main reason I released SNS into the the wild. Up until that point, I was a single data point with little more than confirmation bias. Any discussion of absolutes based on one set of data points does not pass the sniff test. That is not how science works.
I think a person can still use a stir plate, use a copper wort chiller and not use sulfites in the mash and still make good beer, but apparently I’m wrong. ;D
Lol! For me, it was never about eliminating stir plates. It was about eliminating the mindset that stir plates were the best and only way to make a starter, which is not remotely true.
I thought SNS originated amongst Australian homebrewers…?
In any event, the problem with your assertion is not with science. It’s that homebrewing in garages, basements, and patios is not the same thing as highly controlled research in a laboratory. This is behind the saying, “reality often astonishes theory.”
The conditions under which repeatable results are observed/obtained over and over again are not representative of the highly variable conditions under which homebrewers actually brew. In the real world, there are a multitude of unknown, uncontrolled variables that singularly and/or collectively can influence the final beer. In the real world, two different homebrewers making the exact same beer using the same ingredients will make two different beers.
My broader point is what while peer-reviewed research is useful, don’t ignore your own empirical observations, even if they don’t square with the peer-reviewed research, and even if someone on a homebrew forum insists that your empirical observations must be wrong.
Popularizing SNS on a homebrew forum does not constitute “peer-review.” The plural of anecdotes is not data. You must know that.
I am making beer I like using sns starters when appropriate and I appreciate that you shared your experience with this method as well as other yeast knowledge you have shared. That’s one data point and it’s anecdotal. But thanks 
!
I tried using sns a few times and the beer turned out great. The only problem I had with sns was that it was hard for me to determine when the starter reached high Krausen by just looking at it. Maybe it was the particular yeasts, but there wasn’t much Krausen to be seen.
I was just joshin’ with you (sorta?). I haven’t used a stir plate to grow yeast except for once in the last couple years. I like the low tech approach you have suggested. I will say that while I see where you are coming with from the “shearing” standpoint I think (without any evidence!) that it’s like the difference between hydrating dry yeast or just throwing it in the fermenter dry. Sure, some cells are going to die but … doesn’t seem to matter (and I was one of those “rehydrating” guys at one point in time).
What works for me personally is to make a 1 gallon “fun batch” and bottle condition that (right off the fermenter) or sometimes keg it in my 4.5L keg and just use that yeast for 5 gallon batches. The one gallons batches are super fast and easy and I can do them in the “background” while I’m doing other stuff.
I definitely think there’s lots of ways to make great beer! There’s also lot’s of ways to make bad beer.
That was where I was headed.
That is the problem with any data point in brewing at the amateur level. There just to many variables.
I agree for the most part, but for someone to be useful to the community as whole it has to be observable outside of the original context. Releasing SNS into the world was not true peer-review in the traditional scientific sense. The challenge I receive on a regular basis is lack of cell counts. My intent was never about increasing cell counts. My intent was to release a simple, low-cost way to propagate and pitch a starter that worked well and was repeatable. If what I was observing with respect to performance was a fluke, we would have discovered that reality fairly quickly.
In the gist of things, what SNS demonstrates is that cell counts are relative. It woke a lot of brewers up to the idea that the health of the cells going into a fermentation is more important than hitting a cell count on the money. Amateur brewers have been lulled into believing that fermentation is merely getting the numbers correct via what cell count calculators. Yeast cells are living organisms whose performance can vary drastically from genus to genus, species to species, and strain to strain. The whole Kviek culture thing has kind thrown pitching and temperature control rules of thumb a curve ball.
Often the size of the krausen is dependent on the age of the culture being pitched, but a lot of strains produce a very thin krausen at this volume. A general rule of thumb with this technique should be that if the media was shaken into at least 50% foam before the culture is pitched, the starter should be ready to pitch into a batch of wort 12 to 18 hours later. If bubbles are not observed on top of the starter within this period of time, one should give the starter a little more time and log one’s observations. There is a reason why brewers tend to stick to using a handful of cultures. They have used these cultures enough to understand their performance within their breweries.
There is always a low-tech way to do something. I tried to get into woodworking in the 00s to have a hobby while I was away from brewing. I kept thinking that if only had this tool or this piece of equipment, I would be able to make more complex things (yes, I watched one too many episodes of the New Yankee Workshop). One day, I stumbled upon a skilled cabinet maker’s shop. I was surprised by what he could do with simple hand tools and he could do it with ease. That is when I realized that a maximum I had applied to learning how to play guitar when I younger pretty much holds for everything; namely, one should never confuse technique with technology.
Not only are there too many variables, the final result is totally subjective, being a matter of personal taste and preference. There are some brewers who seem obsessed with producing “continental lagers” and have elaborate techniques that won’t work for making other styles. I am not interested in brewing continental lagers. If I ran around bragging that I had a way to cook better Brussels sprouts I am sure there are many people who wouldn’t care.
I agree with this in both hobbies.
On the other hand, I really like the 13" planer I just got. I was so tired of 1" wood that was 3/4" and so forth with no options for the thickness I actually wanted. I also admit that I have no interest in spending the same amount of money on 5 different hand planes and then spending 3 hours getting a plank down to 5/8".
I do most things by hand, in brewing and woodworking, but sometimes new tech is worth the money. No “one way” to do, almost, anything.
Paul
Plus … new toys are fun!
Yes, but a well-tuned, well-maintained Stanley Bedrock plane (or a Lie-Nielsen clone) is a thing of beauty. The Veritas planes are nice too.
I’ll be honest here, I didn’t have great results with SNS. Consider it one data point. If the secret sauce is the size of the container, that could be the main problem as I don’t have anything bigger than a gallon jug. It could also be poor timing since I can’t necessarily plan my brew day down to the hour. I don’t get any foam when using pressure canned starter wort, so maybe DME produces better structure for this. I did the intermittent shaking method 15 years ago, and without fixing these issues I don’t see much difference.
I didn’t speak up earlier because you seem to take everything as a personal attack, but it seems like you want data points. For the scientific method, you have to take the good with the bad.
That is interesting. What size was your starter wort? Were you able to turn at least 50% of the wort into foam? That is pretty much the threshold for the technique to work. I used to use 40ml of autoclaved/pressure-cooked wort to make first-level starters when starting yeast from slant. I always achieved at least a thin foam head on those tiny starters, so I do not think that it was the pressure-canned starter wort. What I have observed is that pressure cooking wort does is cause a greater amount of protein to break out of solution than boiling, but that does not explain the lack of performance.
Nope, almost no foam starting with pressure canned (all grain) wort and a vial of fresh yeast. However, second generation did produce a bunch of foam; this was a mishmash of everything at the bottom of the fermenter, relatively clean but probably with some hop trub as well.
Don’t get me wrong, I want this to work. Easy is good!
That is interesting because the method has worked like clockwork for so many people. Have you tried direct O2 injection into pressure-canned starter wort? What is the gravity of the wort? I am assuming that you are making a one quart/one liter starter in a one-gallon glass jug.
Direct O2 injection was actually the only time I had my starter wort smell stale at the end. Initial manual shaking of the jug plus slow stirring (4/10 on cimarec stir plate) never smells bad and I still decant the wort after chilling. I can it at 1.076 and dilute 50/50 with distilled water.
It could have something to do with my wort. I go straight from the mash to the canner, out of laziness. Never caused a problem. There is a ton of break material at the bottom of the ball jar, though.
i did use 1 quart of wort in a gallon jug for the SNS. i’ll try it again with the same canned wort and take a video.
Nothing makes protein break out of solution like cooking wort at 121C/250F under pressure. I was shocked the first time I observed it because I had hopped, pre-boiled, and filtered the wort through a paper coffee filter before pressuring cooking it. I did so hoping to obtain sediment-free sterile wort.