I agree, Denny. I’m not interested in whether a highly trained taster can perceive a difference, but rather if the typical homebrewer and craft beer drinker is going to be able to. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve thought I perceived a difference in a beer that I made where I changed some small variable, but I was never comparing them side-by-side. It was all based off of memory, which I’ve come to question the validity of quite a bit. If I’ve learned anything since starting this xBmt series, it’s that subconscious bias runs rampant when it comes to sensory perception, we all want to believe that the things we do make a difference.
The tasting panel consisted of a homebrew shop owner, board members of a homebrew club, experienced beer drinking staff of Gambrinus Malting Co., and a bunch of experienced homebrewers. It’s understandable, ludicrous as it may be, to want to blame results that don’t confirm our practices on the participants. If you or anyone else is interested in participating, let me know, I’d be happy to send you samples to taste blind! Just ask Denny
And for record, I’m sticking with making starters too!
While I’m sticking with starters, too, I appreciate what you do. The xBmts are always interesting - they either reinforce my own observations or challenge them. Good either way. Keep up the good work !
That’s really cool to hear, I appreciate it! I think some people assume I do what I do in an attempt to prove something, when in actuality, I started this series to prove to myself that what I was doing really mattered. To say I’ve been surprised with some of the results, especially having tried the beers side by side, would be a massive understatement.
Here’s a funny anecdote - I went to a neighbor’s house tonight to rack over a couple kegs I brewed with him to serving kegs (a keg to keg transfer) for a wedding this weekend. We completed that - 2 Hearted Ale clone - and he asked me to judge an APA that he had on tap. I gladly obliged - and it was fantastic, so I suggested that he take the third keg to the wedding for those who might enjoy a less hoppy beer and that I thought that the APA was really better than the IPA in my opinion. It turned out that the APA was a beer that I had brewed back in January with him (I honestly did not know, because he said it was a beer he had brewed in November). Long story short, I had remarked about the water profile being perfect for the style and that the water really made the difference.
Just goes to show you that if you are open to honest feedback, the feedback will likely fit the beer. Little did I know that the water that Martin’s spreadsheet suggested would be so good! I post this just to say that an Exbeeriment can come from the most unexpected places…
A yeast culture is kind of like a nuclear weapon in that one only needs to be less than an order of magnitude away from a calculated yeast cell count in order for it to be effective. Given enough carbon and oxygen, the difference in propagation time between 50 billion cells and 200 billion cells is 180 minutes at 25C.
With that said, your experiment also highlights something else I that have been championing on this forum; namely, that one should pitch at high krausen instead of waiting until the starter has fermented out. Cells that are pitched at high krausen are in better health than those that have reached quiescence. However, in your case, you demonstrated the difference in health between two different cultures that had reached quiescence. One culture had recently reached quiescence whereas the other had been in a quiescent state for an extended period of time. Yeast cell health declines as the cells get further away from high krausen.
Here’s what really made the difference in lag times. In addition to increasing the size of the biomass, the starter gave the yeast cells time replenish reserves that had been exhausted during an extended period of quiescence. Additionally, the starter was propagated at room temperature, which is closer to 25C than the typical fermentation temperature. The lag time on the direct pitch would have been a fraction of the time that it was had you pitched at 21C/70F and waited for visible sighs of fermentation to appear before placing the fermentation vessel into your fermentation chamber. Yeast metabolism slows as temperature is decreased. Anything that slows yeast metabolism increases the the length of the replication period. However, in this case, slowing yeast metabolism was not necessarily a bad thing because low temperatures affect wild microflora more than they do domesticated brewing yeast strains.
This is fantastic, thank you! Based on your name, you seem an authority on the subject. If ever you feel like contributing, shoot me an email (brulosopher@gmail.com), I’d love to have little “from the expert” snippets like this included in our results articles
Yes Mark has some great knowledge and expertise with yeast. Ive tried his approach for my ales with smaller starter pitched at high krausen and cant say I find anything wrong with it. I have not done it with lagers mostly because of the volume of the starter and it worries me about pitching all that DME wort into my lager. one day perhaps I will brave it and try and see …just haven’t gotten there yet ;D
I just tried it with my Märzen yesterday. I also, with some trepidation, cut my usual starter size by about a third, bringing it down to about 7% of the total volume in the fermenter. I brew this recipe all the time, so it should be a good test to see if it has a noticeable difference in flavor (pro or con). I’m hoping that the health of the yeast I’m pitching will offset the reduced cell count, and that since the starter is at high krausen it shouldn’t be introducing any oxidized wort character. I have high hopes since the starter took off like a rocket (comparatively, for this this yeast at least) and smelled good at pitching time.
