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BOBTHEukBREWER · 05-11-2012, 10:59 AM

My post of yesterday "too much water" described how I had an excess of wort. The main brew was given a yeast starter (safale 04 hydrated then 1 teaspoon brewing sugar added to give a rocky head in the starter jug within 2 hours), the extra 1.5 gals of lower gravity wort had a full sachet of safale 04 sprinkled on it.

18 hours after yeast pitch the main brew is fermenting strongly with a 2 inch head, the small low SG batch has a very little activity so far.

Surely the sooner a brew starts to ferment strongly the better? It is so easy to re-hydrate in 150 ml water then add 1 ts brewing sugar and leave (covered) for 2 hours or so.......

**TopherM** · 05-11-2012, 07:16 PM

There is no need to make a starter with a dry yeast packet. The dry yeast has plenty of viable yeast cells to just go ahead and pitch it. There really isn't even a particular advantage to the rehydration unless you are using the dry yeast on a high OG beer, which most people wouldn't anyway. You can just pitch dry yeast directly into the wort and oxygenate/stir the crap out of it.

As far as the other question, you may be mistaking the visable signs of fermentation for the actual fermentation. The batch with the higher gravity is showing more visable signs of active fermentation than the one with lower gravity, which would be expected because there is more sugar for the yeast to eat. However, that doesn't mean the lower gravity wort isn't fermenting just as fast. I've had beers ferment out completely with little to no visable signs of fermentation, including a hardly-distinguishable krausen. Less available sugar also = less visable krausen.

Everything seems normal!

Question...if all the wort came from the same brewday batch, how did the "main brew" have a higher gravity than the "extra" wort? Why wouldn't they be the same?

**tre9er** · 05-11-2012, 08:08 PM

I too can attest I've had beers that hardly bubbled out the airlock, had almost no signs of krausen, but they were beer and fermented out properly.

BOBTHEukBREWER · 05-13-2012, 03:39 PM

TopherM - I put the runnings into my 6 gal FV jug by jug. I reached the full mark but was still collecting runnings. As I was sparging by adding 4 pints for every 4 pints of wort collected, it follows that the OG of the runnings was gradually diminishing.

I could have mixed it all up I suppose, but in the warmer time of the year (UK readers cringe now) I quite like very weak beers for a change.

BOBTHEukBREWER · 05-13-2012, 03:42 PM

To the other point, until carbon dioxide is being evolved, the yeast activity is in the build up stage. I am just saying I reached the "steady state" much quicker in the batch with the yeast starter. AT the 18 hour point, there was no CO2 evolution in the weaker dry pitched batch.