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Author Topic: First Stout...am I doing it right?  (Read 5821 times)

Offline euge

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Re: First Stout...am I doing it right?
« Reply #15 on: February 13, 2012, 07:42:20 am »
The instructions have gotten better in the past few years. The key for me was using regular tap water and following the instructions as written. You know how we homebrewers are... Distilled or RO water gave me real problems and it took me a while to snap to it.

Not to thread hijack, but what was the problem with using RO water for rehydrating your yeast? I've only done 1 batch with dry yeast so far, but I used microwaved & cooled RO water and everything seems to have turned out fine. Am I better off using tap water in the future?

The harder the water the better. It slows the absorption through the cell wall and in return the yeast cell doesn't leak important components. Simply put. Others could explain better...





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Offline sharg54

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Re: First Stout...am I doing it right?
« Reply #16 on: February 13, 2012, 02:18:32 pm »
That Irish ale yeast is best between 60 and 68 degrees. You more or less put it back into storage at 50 degrees. I use it quite extensively in my porters and stouts and it is quite a good yeast. Just bring up the temp and it should take right off... Put in a closet or something upstairs . If your using a glass carboy and don't have a dark room to put it in just cover the bottle with a shirt or blanket to keep it dark. Light and yeast don't get along very well.  ;D
« Last Edit: February 19, 2012, 08:53:56 pm by sharg54 »
People keep telling me it's not rocket science... I like rockets..

Offline majorvices

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Re: First Stout...am I doing it right?
« Reply #17 on: February 13, 2012, 03:19:18 pm »
The instructions have gotten better in the past few years. The key for me was using regular tap water and following the instructions as written. You know how we homebrewers are... Distilled or RO water gave me real problems and it took me a while to snap to it.

Side by side rehydrating and not rehydrating: I've done it many times and have never noticed a difference.

Offline malzig

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Re: First Stout...am I doing it right?
« Reply #18 on: February 13, 2012, 07:56:29 pm »
Side by side rehydrating and not rehydrating: I've done it many times and have never noticed a difference.
Have you ever checked viability?

It seems like there is a disconnect between the idea that a proper sized starter is important to brewing quality beer and the one that says it doesn't matter if you kill about half the yeast by not rehydrating.

Offline euge

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Re: First Stout...am I doing it right?
« Reply #19 on: February 13, 2012, 08:10:04 pm »
It seems like there is a disconnect between the idea that a proper sized starter is important to brewing quality beer and the one that says it doesn't matter if you kill about half the yeast by not rehydrating.

Thank you. 
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool. -Richard P. Feynman

Laws are spider-webs, which catch the little flies, but cannot hold the big ones. -Anacharsis

Offline bluesman

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Re: First Stout...am I doing it right?
« Reply #20 on: February 13, 2012, 08:20:59 pm »
I think it was a Brew Strong session where JZ talks about this issue. He states that dry pitching kills 50% of the viable yeast prior to fermentation and it's a bad practice. I have no data that substantiates that but I see that Sean has done a crude study indicating this does happen. I think that high sugar concentrations make it difficult for the cell wall to transfer water and nutrients.

Ron Price

Offline tschmidlin

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Re: First Stout...am I doing it right?
« Reply #21 on: February 13, 2012, 10:38:15 pm »
The 50% viability number is not accurate, it's a rough, and if IIRC, pessimistic estimate.  JZ may have done his own counts, but I read an article in the journal of the ASBC a few years ago.  They only tested a couple of dry yeasts straight from the manufacturer, and going from memory, one was 85% viable.  The point is, there are too many factors to say 50% die.  And I need to renew my ASBC membership ::)

All of that said, I often rehydrate using go-ferm. Sometimes I direct pitch.  Usually it depends on the OG, high OG gets rehydrated.  Under 1.050 I don't bother.  ;)
Tom Schmidlin

Offline thomasbarnes

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Re: First Stout...am I doing it right?
« Reply #22 on: February 13, 2012, 11:30:16 pm »
If you're fermenting in a 50 *F basement, you either need to warm up your beer or use lager yeast.

One technique for warming your beer is to put the bucket in a clean covered garbage can or plastic tub partially filled with water. Then put a fish tank heater into the water bath. Cost of materials is about $30.

Offline malzig

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Re: First Stout...am I doing it right?
« Reply #23 on: February 14, 2012, 04:34:31 am »
The 50% viability number is not accurate, it's a rough, and if IIRC, pessimistic estimate.
In Sean Terrill's case it was an empirical observation, not an estimate.

In addition, it seems to have affected the quality of the final beer, by his subjective measure.

Offline majorvices

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Re: First Stout...am I doing it right?
« Reply #24 on: February 14, 2012, 05:25:51 am »
Side by side rehydrating and not rehydrating: I've done it many times and have never noticed a difference.
Have you ever checked viability?

It seems like there is a disconnect between the idea that a proper sized starter is important to brewing quality beer and the one that says it doesn't matter if you kill about half the yeast by not rehydrating.

I have this thing called a sense of taste. Maybe you have it too? They taste the same. They finish the same FG. They ferment nearly identically side by side by visual examination. That's good enough for me, especially the taste part. ;)

Offline majorvices

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Re: First Stout...am I doing it right?
« Reply #25 on: February 14, 2012, 05:33:32 am »

All of that said, I often rehydrate using go-ferm. Sometimes I direct pitch.  Usually it depends on the OG, high OG gets rehydrated.  Under 1.050 I don't bother.  ;)

I still rehydrate as well on higher beers. In fact, I brewed a 1.090 beer and rehydrated with Go-Ferm just last week. If it is going to make a difference it seems to me like it will make a difference on higher gravity beers. But I don't bother rehydrating on even 1.065 beers anymore. It just doesn't make one bit of difference in my fermentations, so there is just no need to bother with it.

Offline tschmidlin

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Re: First Stout...am I doing it right?
« Reply #26 on: February 14, 2012, 12:25:25 pm »
The 50% viability number is not accurate, it's a rough, and if IIRC, pessimistic estimate.
In Sean Terrill's case it was an empirical observation, not an estimate.

In addition, it seems to have affected the quality of the final beer, by his subjective measure.
Sean saw better than 50% viability.  He also only did one test with one type of yeast that was lyophilized 6 months prior to the test.  This is not a criticism of his work, but the conclusions you seem to be drawing from it.

There is likely to be strain to strain variability, differences between manufacturers, differences based on the re-hydration water, and differences due to storage conditions and time.  This is why I think saying 50% is not accurate, any more than saying 85% viability just because someone did it once and that was the result.  We've got a couple of data points, but not enough to draw sweeping conclusions.
Tom Schmidlin