A regular on the hoporific and AHA forums is posting on the experimental homebrewing blog. He's a bit of an expert in yeast and his posts are definitely worth a read. This one on yeast health and pitching quantities...
http://www.experimentalbrew.com/blogs/s ... ar-weapons
cheers
steve
Yeast pitching
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steve crawshaw
- Posts: 856
- Joined: Thu Apr 22, 2010 8:49 pm
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Yeast pitching
I like to keep a bottle of stimulant handy in case I see a snake, which I also keep handy.
Re: Yeast pitching
I've never been too concerned about estimating cell counts as I understood what exponential growth implied and my sanitation has been pretty good. Also, results of experiments I found on the web suggest many people prefer severely underpitched beers and many more couldn't tell the difference. Lastly, Brew Lab instructions for their slants on their web site look like under pitching yet have remained "uncorrected" for years.
The key points are that the yeast has to be able to out-compete anything else - for which sufficient oxygen is required (unless using dry yeast).
Anyway, last week's brew was pitched with yeast grown using the "James Bond" method. Here's a copy of my post on Jim's Beer Kit
"I've stepped up Proper Job yeast on quite a few occasions, finishing off on a stir plate. "Takes of like a rocket" often applies when pitched. This time I tried:
Wednesday, pour two bottles of PJ
Swill yeast from bottom with 50ml 1.030 wort
Dump into Colman's mustard jar and shake to a froth
Thursday, dump into a litre of wort in a demijohn, shake to a froth
Saturday afternoon I poured the starter into 20 litre of wort. Sunday all looked good - a nice krausen a couple of centimetres deep, Monday morning it had overflowed a 33 litre FV. Oops! Should have guessed it might do that, luckily the FV was on a large plastic sheet.
Thanks for the method - very easy, I'll be doing that again.
The key points are that the yeast has to be able to out-compete anything else - for which sufficient oxygen is required (unless using dry yeast).
Anyway, last week's brew was pitched with yeast grown using the "James Bond" method. Here's a copy of my post on Jim's Beer Kit
"I've stepped up Proper Job yeast on quite a few occasions, finishing off on a stir plate. "Takes of like a rocket" often applies when pitched. This time I tried:
Wednesday, pour two bottles of PJ
Swill yeast from bottom with 50ml 1.030 wort
Dump into Colman's mustard jar and shake to a froth
Thursday, dump into a litre of wort in a demijohn, shake to a froth
Saturday afternoon I poured the starter into 20 litre of wort. Sunday all looked good - a nice krausen a couple of centimetres deep, Monday morning it had overflowed a 33 litre FV. Oops! Should have guessed it might do that, luckily the FV was on a large plastic sheet.
Thanks for the method - very easy, I'll be doing that again.
When a man is tired of beer, he is tired of life; for there is in beer all that life can afford