I’m fairly new to home brewing, 5 extract brews under my belt and I have always used 1 Wyeast smack pack for each batch and they all turned out pretty darn good. Almost all of the instructions call for a yeast starter and was wondering what would happen if I pitched 2 smack packs per batch? Also I have read a lot of people use White Labs vials and was wondering if you can directly pitch the vials, or do you need to make a starter?
Yes you can just pitch 2 packs. But that would be 2X the cost verse the cost of some DME for a starter.
WL’s have approximately the same cell count as WY. It’s more important to make a starter with WL because they don’t have the “puffed pouch” showing you the yeast is alive. The starter while multiplying the yeast, also shows you they are alive.
You don’t need a fancy flask and stir plate to make a starter. A simple large glass container, 1 gallon jug, some have used a flower vase, work great. You can make a stir plate if you like out of used computer parts.
Invest in a kitchen scale that reads in metric. About $30-50. It will have many uses and is better than measuring spoons and cups.
Will it ferment better with 2 packs or would i be wasting money. It seem to go ok with 1 pack.
You can get like 4x more yeast cells with a yeast starter than with 2 packs especially if you use a stir plate, from what ive read. The higher the gravity the more yeast cells you want
The purist will say that you need to pitch a correct amount of yeast for the batch size and gravity. Mr Malty
http://www.mrmalty.com/calc/calc.html
is one calculator to give you an estimate on the amount of yeast needed.
When you start with a low cell count you can have a longer lag time and possible off flavors. The yeast will multiply to the amount they want to be at.
Can I tell the difference between (all other things the same) a beer under pitched and one pitched with the optimum yeast count? Probably not.
If you are making a beer that taste good to you with one smack pack or one vial, that is all that matters.
If you are making good beer, I would start with being concerned about your process first. Have fun and keep things clean and sanitary. At the same time be concerned about your fermentation temps. Temps, IMO, are a bigger flavor concern than yeast count.
Then if you want, worry about starters.
Extract brewing, no need to worry about water chemistry. Outside of chlorine/chloramines. If you do get into AG brewing, good beer can be made w/out worry about chemistry. If you want to dabble in it, go ahead.
You can reuse the yeast for multiple batches. Clean and sanitize a quart mason jar. Pour the slurry from the fermenter in it. Lightly seal (it may build up pressure) and place in the fridge. For the next batch of beer use 1/4 - 1/3 of this. That will greatly lower your costs. You can save this yeast as long as you feel comfortable. I’ve made a starter with 3-4 spoonfuls of yeast going out 1 year. The beer taste good to me, and a few of my trusted friends.
Keep it simple (or as complex as you want) and have fun.
A few batches ago, I was positively apoplectic about yeast starters, but they are dead simple. As with anything in brewing, you can make it as easy or as difficult as you could imagine…
Also, getting a starter going a day or a week ahead of brew day gets me in a brewing mindset. Sort of like a practice mini brew/clean/sanitize session to get me prepared.
I’ve brewed plenty of great beers without a starter. Once, I had a long lag time and an under-attenuated beer so I researched starters at great length. I read the book “yeast” which I highly recommend. Here’s my cliff notes:
-beers don’t “need” starters, but as gravity goes up, so does the risk of problems.
-pitch rate calculators don’t tell the full story; they only differentiate between ale & lager with OG being the only factor determining pitch rate. There are many other factors, the 2 most important being yeast strain and beer style. That said, they are a great tool and a good place to start.
-“under-pitching” isn’t always a bad thing. Again, depending on yeast strain and beer style it may be beneficial to pitch less yeast than shown by a calculator.
-proper aeration is at least as important as pitch rate. This point is way under emphasized in the home brewing community and even many books on the subject. More yeast related problems can be traced to under-aerated worts than under-pitched ones. If you think shaking your carboy around for a few minutes is enough, think again! Properly aerated “underpitched” beers ferment out much better than oxygen poor ones with the recommended cell count.
-making a starter is a fairly simple affair and is a great tool to have in your home brewer toolbox. That said I don’t always use every tool for every brew. It’s much better to understand what’s going on with your yeast than to blindly follow the advice of a yeast calculator. This way you’ll know when to use the right tool for the job!
Remember, yeast are living things and the better you attend to their needs, the better they will perform. Aeration, nutrition, temperature control and pitch rate all interrelate to produce our favorite end result, great beer!!!
Cost savings would be my biggest driver for doing a starter over pitching two packs. Even if you buy a nice flask and a stir plate, it’s only going to take a few starters and a couple of times saving the yeast to get your money back as you are saving $6-$13 a batch.
I’d also add that pitching 2 packs (200 billion cells) wouldn’t improve a lower gravity beer whatsoever. In fact, overpitching can also lead to off flavors in your beer, so there is a such thing as too much of a good thing. Try to avoid black and white, one size fits all solutions when it comes to yeast. They’ll thank you by producing better beer…
Thanks for all the advice. I will probably continue to pitch single packs until I start brewing high gravity stuff, then I will try a starter.
With Wyeast, I always smack the pack of course. Then I might still decide to make a separate yeast starter if it took several days to swell up. But if the pack swells up in just a few hours, then I figure I’ve got good yeast and just pitch it as-is.
The exceptions are lagers and anything fermented around 60 F, and high gravity beers. At these conditions, either use two or three packs as you have suggested, or always make a starter.
With White Labs I always make a starter because it’s the only way to know for sure if your yeast is alive. Best Before dates are useful to a point, but even those dates are wrong sometimes.
The size of the yeast starter also matters. Typically for a lager you’ll need a gallon-sized starter to make a yeast cake big enough for 5 gallons. If you don’t want to pitch the whole gallon of yeast, then you can pour off some of the clear liquid (assuming you make the starter several days in advance) then just pitch the yeast cake from the bottom of your starter. For ales, you only need 1 to 2 quarts typically, which most people just dump right in. For an altbier I am making today and fermenting at about 62 F, I made a 2-quart starter, and while I did debated about it a bit, I have chosen to just dump the whole thing in. In a 6-gallon batch that I am doing, another 2 quarts of yeast seems like not such a bad idea. If I was lagering it (ferment at 50 F or less), then I might have made 5 quarts and just poured off the liquid.
Overall, yeast starters will make better beer for you than if you just pitch one or two or three packs of yeast straight from the store. Starters make absolutely sure your yeast is alive and kicking and ready to chow down when you pitch it into your batch, and that you’ll have plenty of live cells to do the job.
[quote=“dmtaylo2”]With Wyeast, I always smack the pack of course. Then I might still decide to make a separate yeast starter if it took several days to swell up. But if the pack swells up in just a few hours, then I figure I’ve got good yeast and just pitch it as-is.
The exceptions are lagers and anything fermented around 60 F, and high gravity beers. At these conditions, either use two or three packs as you have suggested, or always make a starter.
With White Labs I always make a starter because it’s the only way to know for sure if your yeast is alive. Best Before dates are useful to a point, but even those dates are wrong sometimes.
The size of the yeast starter also matters. Typically for a lager you’ll need a gallon-sized starter to make a yeast cake big enough for 5 gallons. If you don’t want to pitch the whole gallon of yeast, then you can pour off some of the clear liquid (assuming you make the starter several days in advance) then just pitch the yeast cake from the bottom of your starter. For ales, you only need 1 to 2 quarts typically, which most people just dump right in. For an altbier I am making today and fermenting at about 62 F, I made a 2-quart starter, and while I did debated about it a bit, I have chosen to just dump the whole thing in. In a 6-gallon batch that I am doing, another 2 quarts of yeast seems like not such a bad idea. If I was lagering it (ferment at 50 F or less), then I might have made 5 quarts and just poured off the liquid.
Overall, yeast starters will make better beer for you than if you just pitch one or two or three packs of yeast straight from the store. Starters make absolutely sure your yeast is alive and kicking and ready to chow down when you pitch it into your batch, and that you’ll have plenty of live cells to do the job.[/quote]
I think the statement that yeast starters “will make better beer” is a little misleading. Assuming a healthy yeast pack or vile and a lower gravity wort that only calls for 100 billion-ish cells a starter won’t really do anything for a beer’s quality. That said, you make a good point about a starter ensuring you have viable yeast, especially with White Labs. In the case of a lower gravity wort, a starter simply provides insurance that you have healthy yeast. To state certain sizes for starters without mention of the wort’s original gravity is again, misleading. A gallon sized starter for a lager for example might be overkill, just right or even not enough. Again the key variable is the OG of the wort, not simply ale or lager. Plug some example numbers in to a yeast calculator and you’ll see what I mean…
I’m obviously not trying to mislead anybody. If you’re a critical thinker as I am, then by all means, go pay a visit to mrmalty.com and use his yeast calculator. On the other hand, I have made a good 90 batches or so and as such I feel I have used mrmalty enough to be able to generalize a bit and provide some reasonable rules of thumb.
No worries, I wasn’t trying to critisize you, just to give the original poster the whole story…
I made a yeast starter for a 1.060 double IPA with white labs california ale yeast. Is there any way to stop that yeast from fermenting once it starts? I used 2L of water and 2 cups of DME. After 14-16 hours on the stir plate i started getting blow off through the foam on the flask so I threw it in the fridge and set my fridge to 40 degrees. 24 hours later in the fridge and the thing was still fermenting! On the bright side after i pitched the 2L of yeast in my wort it started bubbling 2 hours later and had a 3 inch thick layer of krausen 6 hours later.
A 1.060 is a Double IPA? In my book, that is a normal gravity IPA. Sounds like you make a pretty strong starter.
To prevent yeast starters from blowing the top off, use Fermcap-S. :cheers:
