BeerMbob

Recipes 

Hello and firstly thank you for this experiment and sharing your findings.
Could you please explain how you measure the amount of yeast cells?
If a smack pack contains 1billion cells and you create a starter, how do you know when the culture will have stepped up to for example approx. 1.3 billion?
Or if I create a 2 litre starter and added the smack pack what would the cell count be?

Reno_eNVy

Recipes 

Yeah definitely need to subscribe to this one.

__________________
Primary: Sahti, Strawberry Banana Blonde, Caramel Quad

Kegged: Cascadian Dark Ale -- Punkin' Ale -- "Bitter and Rye" American-style Bitter

Bottled: English Barleywine (brewed 9/26/09 -- bottled 5/5/10)

LET'S GO LA!
LA CAMPIONE!
PLAY FOR GLORY, THE GLORY LA!

bigbeergeek

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Subbed... and horny.

__________________
"Good people drink good beer." -HST

phattysbox

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Hi Everyone!

Jason here, and I am the one actually doing the experiment. Glad everyone is interested in this! Currently the bottles are priming and should be ready when I poll the class by the 14th. I'll post the results soon after.

I did taste them out of the primary and they were each different. With the control pitch I thought, "ok tastes like a run of the mill blonde ale. Not bad."
The other two I went "meh..." Of course this is all very unscientific and not blinded. Before I poll the class I'll have my wife blind the samples and critique the brews. As a side note this is the first time I brewed in 1 gallon jugs and I did not use oxygen (decided to leave this variable for another day). The base beer may not be the best beer i have brewed, but hopefully the samples will be different from one another.

Thanks everyone! Feel free to post comments here. I'm more active on BA but this should change!

J

phattysbox

Recipes 

So I counted the cells with a hematocytometer in the lab. Wyeast packs usually have around 100 billion or so, give or take. For the experiment I made a simple one liter starter from a very small amount of cells. About 1 million. I freeze them down and store them in aliquots at -80C so I don't have to buy smack packs

j1laskey

Recipes 

Do you have access to a ViCell in your lab in will give your far more accurate viability counts

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Primary: Cluster Fly Farmhouse Ale, Pirate Strong Ale
Secondary:
Kegged: Olde Zomby Woof, Fat Lenny DIPA, Apple Bottom Graff, E.at S.ki B.eer
The Secretion Brewery

Let's think it over and stop making sense

phattysbox

Recipes 

We have something similar in the lab but its optimized for mammalian cell culture. However, I feel something like this is unnecessary. Counting in a chamber slide, if done correctly, can be extremely accurate. I have done trypan blue staining, but only for bottle dregs. My yeast that I grow in the lab are foten 95-98% viable since they are continuously stirred and stepped up appropriately.

J

bigbeergeek

Recipes 

Thanks for sharing your experiment with us!

__________________
"Good people drink good beer." -HST

MrManifesto

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Uhhhh wow, world is a small place! Looking forward to your class, see you on the 14th!

mcaple1

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sub'd