How much harvested yeast to pitch?

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Nostrildamus

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I've rinsed and stored my yeast and they are all happy and clean in their jar in my fridge. I'll be brewing again in a week or so and I'm wondering how much yeast I should pitch. Sure, I could pitch the whole she-bang but I'd like to get a few batches out of the considerable amount that I have. I know the suggested pitching rates for 5 gal batches but I don't know how many cells are in any given measurement.

Does anyone know how many yeast cells are in a teaspoon or some other measurement?

Thanks, brew brothers and sisters.
 
I usually will pitch 1/3rd of what I harversted and it's always been more than enough.

Remember that the yeast cake you harvested is many times the amount of yeast you started with. After all, it's just been one big food orgy for 7 days.
 
Good question Nost.

I brewed an American wheat a week ago now and used a Kolsch yeast per Jamil's suggestion. I am brewing in a week a Kolsch for a competition so i will have a huge amount of healthy Kolsch yeast and also am curious about the amount i should pitch.

Can one over pitch?


Should i just dump the Kolsch on the cake?
 
I do believe you can over pitch from what I've read in Daniels' Designing Great Beer. If you over pitch the yeast can work through the wort too fast and go dormant before being given the chance to clean up their by-product.

I think you would really have to pitch a lot of yeast to do that though.
 
If you're pitching relatively fresh slurry, like a day out of primary, I'd say a cup is plenty to pitch directly. If you've harvested and refrigerated for a while, I'd certainly make a starter to get it re-energized (oxygenate the starter well).
 
Hmm. Seems like we're getting nowhere quick here. Okay, how about this:

Can one of you who brew with White Labs yeast go look at the vial and see if there's a fluid measurement on there and then estimate how much of that vial is yeast and how much is liquid? A teaspoon? A tablespoon?

Those vials contain 75-150 billion cells and therefore may give us an idea. I would likely double or triple that amount. But we need an estimated measurement of how much is in there. I use Wyeast and don't have access to White labs at my LHBS so I have no idea how much yeast is in there.
 
Thanks DeathBrewer, all hail the dark lord. :rockin:

A tenth of a soda can. That seems to make sense from looking at them. Now how much of the contents would you estimate is yeast (solids)?
 
DeathBrewer said:
you could check their website...i was searching for you but got distracted by the honeyz they have werkin there:

http://whitelabs.com/about_us.html

:cross:

you're not kidding. smokin hawt yeast babe!

sharron.jpg
 
I think that I over pitched my last batch. The beer tastes great but is cloudy as hell. But I just can't shell out the cost of new yeast vials with each beer.

If we were taliking baby food jars...... how much yeast should I pour from one of those jars?
 
I harvested my yeast cake on Wednesday night. It's now Friday and i put it all in a growler (and into the fridge) thinking I was going to brew sooner. I plan to brew tomorrow (Saturday). Should I:

1. Separate the yeast that's in the growler into smaller jars and let it sit?
2. Go ahead and use the yeast in the growler and make a starter today (Friday)? If so....how much?
3. Don't make a starter. Just let the yeast come up to room temp and pitch all but the trub at the bottom.

This is my first attempt to wash and harvest yeast. I used 48 oz of water I boiled and cooled before swirling the yeast in the carboy. The original strain is White Labs CA Ale.
 
The yeast book has a nice method for estimating density without a microscope. Basically, you do 1/10 or 1/100 dilutions until the fluid is just barely cloudy. This is then such and such a concentration. Multiple by the overall dilutions you did, and that is the concentration. Don't have it in front of me - perhaps someone can chime in with the correct method. Never done this, but it seems like a good method, although it seems like you'll only get a number within an order of magnitude. Maybe, once you get the solution to go clear, you should backtrack to the previous dilution, then titrate with dilution LESS than 10x, until it's at the 'right' cloudiness level. Would sure like to see some more homebrewing techniques that don't involve microscopes. With all the effort we put into water chemistry and the like, this seems like the area most in need of improvement. All the pitch calculators are pretty rough estimates, especially if you're using harvested yeast to make a starter, and not a lab-produced vial/pack.

Sure, you could RDWHAHB, but we wouldn't be very happy if we could only adjust our Ca/Cl/SO4 to the precision offered by the yeast calculators.
 
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