Yeast

[Otto Von Blotto]

Yes I did use the term mediocrity but I also used the term increased risk, not definitely will happen every time. 

Of course home brewers don't have to guarantee 100% success to ferment out, but why wouldn't you aim for that? That sort of comment implies that we should accept failure of some brews, but why should we? I doubt anyone on here is brewing without the intention of success each batch. 

Sure, the yeast have some effect on the flavour but it's not the dominant part of the brew, the strains simply accentuate certain parts of what the malt and hops provide. If I changed pitching rates I would risk introducing flavours I don't want, among other issues. 

I wouldn't say fear of failure, more that I'm driven by success. Failure is not an option, and that goes for anything I do, not just brewing. I've always aimed to be the best I can be at whatever it is I'm doing. I'm also perfectly happy with the way my brews turn out and have no desire to change them.

[Beerlust]

1 hour ago, Mark D Pirate said:

@Beerlust

Interesting article but has very little to do with pitching rate and focused more on the role of oxygen in the early stages of ferment. 

Read between the lines Mark. 

1 hour ago, Mark D Pirate said:

...i like smackpacks as a viability test,

Me too.

1 hour ago, Mark D Pirate said:

...I changed supplier for my yeast and now use Imperial. 

Very similar price to Wyeast,  twice the cell counts though 

Thanks for the heads up, I'll have to look into them.

Cheers & good brewing,

Lusty.

[Beerlust]

32 minutes ago, Otto Von Blotto said:

...Of course home brewers don't have to guarantee 100% success to ferment out, but why wouldn't you aim for that? That sort of comment implies that we should accept failure of some brews, but why should we? I doubt anyone on here is brewing without the intention of success each batch.

It's not about accepting failure or aiming for it. It is OK to fail btw. You'll learn more from failures than you ever will by living in a safety bubble, & that goes for all things in life. Take the modern cars we all drive around in today as an example. They are what they are today from experimentation & testing limits. Crashing them into walls, driving them at high speeds etc. altering engine configurations until something gives or reacts positively or adversely, or crumples in a particular way etc.

I look at my brewing in much the same way about testing limits to find out where the breaking points with things are in a real sense, not just accepting literature written by someone else who may or may not have tested these limits at all themselves before quoting "must do's" & giving authoritative recommendations.

Cheers & good brewing,

Lusty.

[Greenyinthewestofsydney]

20 hours ago, Mark D Pirate said:

In all fairness there are some exceptions that break the rules,  Coopers yeast is one of these .

You may have even attended the 4 way experiment presented to club on this very subject but this is not normal behaviour and just proves that Coopers yeast in an animal 

 

I would love to have the experiment sheets on that. When it was brought up a while ago my first thought was BS!!

On second thoughts I bet it was fermented warmish 20+ and the 4 samples were pear 1, 2, 3 and 4. 

Pitched at 18c. You would get much much different results from pitch rate variability from CCA yeast.

[Beerlust]

14 minutes ago, Greeny1525229549 said:

I would love to have the experiment sheets on that. When it was brought up a while ago my first thought was BS!!

On second thoughts I bet it was fermented warmish 20+ and the 4 samples were pear 1, 2, 3 and 4. 

Pitched at 18c. You would get much much different results from pitch rate variability from CCA yeast.

I saved a copy of Kieren's Presentation. 

Hopefully the following link works. 

Linky.

Cheers,

Lusty.

[Mark D Pirate]

1 hour ago, Beerlust said:

Read between the lines Mark. 

Why read between the lines ? 

The author makes themselves clear enough .

Dr.  White makes himself very clear in his book " Yeast " on the subject of pitching rates. 

You missed a presentation from Atomic yeast by 2 professional yeast guys and I enjoyed a long and interesting conversation over some beers after the meeting with them , I learned plenty 

 

[Otto Von Blotto]

Comparing brewing beer to drink yourself with car crash tests is ridiculous. Have you driven your own car into walls to see how badly it crumples? Of course not, the tests were performed under controlled conditions using dummies. 

When I say failure is not an option, it means I'll do everything I can to prevent it. Of course there are some things that can't always be controlled that might cause issues at times, but there are a lot of things that can be easily done to ensure a successful outcome. I've had a handful of failures over the years and they're all as disappointing as each other. 

Like I said, I am happy with the way my beers turn out so I really don't care how low I might be able to go with a yeast count. It's not gonna improve anything anyway, and I don't need a crappy outcome from doing it to know it won't work for me.

I'm more than happy to try things that could improve my beer but I see no point in altering something that will result in either nothing changing or potentially making the beer worse just to see what might happen. It's just not worth a failed batch if that was to happen. 

I prefer trying out different malt and hops combinations to fine tune or experiment. I've got a few malt bills that don't change either because they give me what I want in the beers they're used in. I'm still gradually trying new hops but the budget doesn't always allow for purchases, so I tend to use up what I've got before buying more. It does result in blocks of a few batches with similar hops but that doesn't take away from my enjoyment of brewing and drinking my beer.

I'm not someone who needs to constantly be trying new stuff to keep my interest and enjoyment up, once I find something I like I tend to stick with it. If the time comes that I get a bit bored with it or feel like something could improve on it, then I change it up. I've already been through the trying different beers either brewing my own or commercial examples, I know what I like and what I don't like, and how to brew my own the way I like it. Why fix what's not broken?

Edited January 24, 2019 by Otto Von Blotto

[Greenyinthewestofsydney]

1 hour ago, Beerlust said:

I saved a copy of Kieren's Presentation. 

Hopefully the following link works. 

Linky.

Cheers,

Lusty.

Ok. Not surprised 2, 3 and 4 were not really distinguishable. For 10L batches the starters are normal, overpitch and more overpitched. And at 17c ferment it will be a lot cleaner than if it was at 20c. Batch 1 is surprising. While at 17c i thought you would taste a difference with that one.

Cheers

Wayne

[Ocean's of Ale-]

Hang in there zelly the kit yeast is good, us04 is even better,  don't worry about these lad's trading fishing tales, let us know how your dark ale goes!

[Zelly]

Thanks for that

tjatscsllbo wanted to know

if I brew with us04 will it taste different.

 

different better 

Or just different 

 

would you use us04 or kit yeast?

 

 

[Shamus O'Sean]

Hi Zelly

If I had the choice I would use the s-04 because they are usually an 11 gram pack whereas the kit yeasts are 7 grams.

Cheers Shamus

[tja1980]

@Zelly S-04 and the kit yeast will have different esters which are the flavors the yeast produce, so to answer your question yes they will taste different, reminds me have a s-04 sitting in the fridge  

Did anyone notice MJ reduced their yeast packets sizes or is it just me? could of sworn they were 11g.

Good luck with the brew

Tristan

Edited January 24, 2019 by tja1980

[Ocean's of Ale-]

14 minutes ago, Zelly said:

 

 

would you use us04 or kit yeast?

 

 

Try two batches at some stage zelly, one with a regular kit yeast a& one with a us04 yeast & you compare,  see what best suits your taste buds. This time  of year its pretty dam hot so try to keep the temperature down on your brew(s).

Good luck matey keep us informed. 

 

[Beerlust]

11 hours ago, Mark D Pirate said:

Why read between the lines ? 

The author makes themselves clear enough .

Dr.  White makes himself very clear in his book " Yeast " on the subject of pitching rates. 

You missed a presentation from Atomic yeast by 2 professional yeast guys and I enjoyed a long and interesting conversation over some beers after the meeting with them , I learned plenty 

I'm sure both were very interesting, but seriously mate, have you ever heard of "agendas"?

Cheers,

Lusty.

[Mark D Pirate]

8 hours ago, Beerlust said:

I'm sure both were very interesting, but seriously mate, have you ever heard of "agendas"?

Cheers,

Lusty.

That sounds a little paranoid there Lusty , Please provide 1 peer reviewed source 

[Beerlust]

3 hours ago, Mark D Pirate said:

That sounds a little paranoid there Lusty , Please provide 1 peer reviewed source 

It's nothing to do with paranoia Pirate, it's just the way the world works.

I work for a yeast manufacturing company where how profitable that company is will have an affect on my life & my lifestyle. Of course I'm going to tell you that you need more than you actually need. I'll even hand you some one sided pie graphs & flowcharts to back up my biased argument. 

For the guys that have the equipment & regularly re-use yeast how much you wish to pitch at your brews costs you nothing more than the tap water you use in the starter. To those that purchase & use fresh yeast it becomes a costly expense if having to use multiple pkts on single brews. So to be suggesting to those brewers that they need to be pitching double (or more) in situations where a single sachet or liquid yeast packet will do the job without issue is unnecessary.

I'm not the one pitching 2, 3, & 4 times the required volumes of yeast at brews. C'mon, I think we can clearly see who is really paranoid. 

Cheers & good brewing,

Lusty.

[Hairy]

11 minutes ago, Beerlust said:

I work for a yeast manufacturing company where how profitable that company is will have an affect on my life & my lifestyle.

Congratulations on the new job!

[Otto Von Blotto]

I daresay homebrewers make up a very small percentage of overall yeast sales, just as they would malt sales and hop sales. How much yeast they throw at a brew isn't really gonna make any difference to the bottom line of the yeast labs, so it's a pretty bloody long bow to be drawing to suggest that these labs are telling homebrewers to pitch more yeast to make their profits.

You keep saying these rates are over pitching, but all through this discussion you've failed to produce one piece of solid information as to what these supposed "required" rates for home brew actually are. All you've said is the widely recommended rates are more than is required. Not many are suggesting to pitch more than one packet at a standard kit and kilo anyway. I even said myself way back at the start that the kit yeast would do the job fine. However, if I had a choice I'd probably use a pack of S-04 on the back of how it went in my porter beers as it seems to suit the darker ales well. When the OG starts rising, more yeast needs to be pitched, it's pretty bloody simple.

Besides, wanting each brew to turn out well and making sure they do isn't being paranoid. The time and effort put in is wasted if it doesn't turn out well.

[Beerlust]

3 minutes ago, Hairy said:

Congratulations on the new job!

Heya Hairy.

Oddly enough, I do have new job but not for a yeast manufacturer. A walk-in bottleshop. No more drive-thru/do you want fries with that BS anymore! Yippee! 

The weather has been crazy hot here the last 2 weeks. Got to 47°C out our way yesterday. Woulda been murder in my old drive-thru. Glad I wasn't there.

Cheers,

Lusty.

[Hairy]

Nice one.

I was going to mention the drive thru but I have I am now limiting my jokes to 20 uses.

[Mark D Pirate]

I must say.... This is the first time I've heard of " Big Yeast " conspiring to rip us off with biased studies.... Tin foil hat territory there. 

Neither Otto or myself have ever claimed that single pack pitching won't ever work,  just that pitching appropriately ( near commercial rates)  has objective , repeatable benefits that any home brewer can duplicate even without fancy flasks and stirplates. 

As your other assertion that it's cost prohibitive to pitch more that's utter bollocks as I likely spend less on yeast than you do 

[Beerlust]

My interest in this conversation only started when 4pkts of liquid yeast was suggested as being necessary to ferment out a 1.080 OG brew. That is "utter bollocks" (IMHO), & I said as much.

I've said what I wanted to convey to those who may still be learning about yeast pitching rates past the point I wished to make about that advised pitching rate. I've had my 2 cents worth (actually closer to 10 cents worth now) in this conversation.

Feel free to carry on the conversation around it without further comment from me though.

Cheers,

Lusty.

[joolbag]

DING DING! Thoroughly entertaining chaps.

[Otto Von Blotto]

Instead it was suggested that two smack packs built up with a suitably sized starter would be sufficient, and I'd agree. But that would probably build the cell count up to about the same amount as four smack packs without a starter anyway. IMO there's no point making a starter unless you're getting a growth rate of at least double what you're starting with. From what I've read on yeast health, it doesn't do it any favours making starters that yield bugger all extra cells.

What I ended up doing since I had harvested yeast available was to build it up from what would probably have been equivalent to a little more than one pack to about 4 times as much as I started with, harvested 20% or so and pitched the rest. Needless to say the brew fermented out as expected to target FG in a week and has now been in a keg for about 2 months. 

[ChristinaS1]

On 1/24/2019 at 6:41 AM, tja1980 said:

@Zelly S-04 and the kit yeast will have different esters which are the flavors the yeast produce, so to answer your question yes they will taste different, reminds me have a s-04 sitting in the fridge  

Did anyone notice MJ reduced their yeast packets sizes or is it just me? could of sworn they were 11g.

Good luck with the brew

Tristan

Hi Tristan,

MJ's packet size has always been 10gm. 

This thread has been quite entertaining. I would hazard to say that what constitutes a commercial pitch rate varies by country / style. I have read that UK and Belgian ale makers use much lower pitch rates than what is typically used in the US and elsewhere. I remember an American pundit (can't remember which one) describing Belgian pitching rates as "scary low." I also read that one well known commercial brewery in the UK ferments at 23-25C. These techniques can work; it all depends what you are after. Pitching rates and temperature manipulation are a means to an end. 

Cheers,

Christina.

Edited January 25, 2019 by ChristinaS1