Activate Dry Yeast?

I'm doing Ed's Haus Pale on Friday, and will be using Danstar Nottingham dry yeast. Yeast is fresh and well within the expiration date on the package.

I'm inclined to pitch the dry yeast to the wort as Ed states. My brewing partner is a bit leery, as he said he's had bad experiences with slow/poor fermentation pitching dry yeast.

Opinions and comments, please. Thanks as always.

Used Nottingham's a lot. I have never need to rehydrate or anything. Just dump the yeast. Give it a swirl or not. You'll be fine. I get fantastic ferms off just dumping and letting the yeast do their thing!

Cheers,

(Note) to add I just did Ed's pale last weekend. I used a different yeast for mine, but I just sprinkle and go. Worked fine for me as always.

(also to add if your friend is getting poor ferms using dry yeast he might need to look at his oxygenating methods.

generally speaking, it never hurts to rehydrate yeast first, so long as sanitization is maintained.

Follow the rehydration instructions on the package, it is pretty easy to do. I just boil some water and let it cool down to the appropriate temperature while aerating my wort. While ptithing without rehydration will work you will significantly reduce the number of viable yeast and run the risk of underpitching. The higher the gravity of your wort the fewer viable cells will remain. The reason for this is that the dried yeast cell membranes are not able to control what solutes (sugar) and ions can cross their membranes which either kills them outright or severely injures them. Once rehydrated they can pick and choose what comes in and what goes out.

GT

Nottingham still ferments out like a champ, even if you just toss it in dry.

I've never rehydrated a packet of Nottingham, but you certainly could do so if you wanted to.

The only difference I've noticed with hydrating vs not, is the lagtimes. When I rehydrate my lagtimes are about half the time if I don't. Other than that, my attenuation is the same. Since I'm well beyond the period of freaking out about lagtimes, I'm mostly concerned with solid attenuation. I've been satisfied every time so far...

I usually rehydrate because as soulive has mentioned, you lose quite a bit of cells in the initial pitch if you don't hydrate first. If you're doing a mid-grav beer and aerate well, it won't affect your bottom line. However, bigger beers and slightly under-oxygenated beers are going to make good use of every living yeast cell (which you can maximize by rehydrating). It takes an extra 5 minutes of work.

Thanks for all the responses.

I'm going to aerate my wort a bit and pitch with dry yeast.

Turn out I activated the yeast after all. Here's what I did:

1. Boiled enough water the night before brew day to activate the yeast. Stored boiled water in a sanitized canning jar.

2. Boiled about 1 cup of water in one of those 2 cup heavy glass Pyrex kitchen measuring pitchers in the microwave. This sanitized the and warmed the pitcher.

3. Empty water from pitcher.

3. Transferred the proper amount of the stored boiled water into the glass pitcher. Since the pitcher contained boiling water, the glass pitcher was warm and got the room temp. stored yeast activating water up to the proper 90F.

4. Suspended the yeast in the pitcher according to package directions. Covered the pitcher with aluminum foil and cooled the pitcher in an ice bath until the yeast suspension was about 70F.

5. Pitched yeast to wort.

Fermentation took right off. I enjoyed the ease and convenience of using dry yeasts for the first time.

without rehydrating. Maybe a bit more lag time but not enuff to bother.

I have had horrid luck with liquid/smack packs.

drayman86 said:

Fermentation took right off. I enjoyed the ease and convenience of using dry yeasts for the first time.

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Dry yeast is very convenient and that's why I almost always use it. I made Ed's on Saturday and without rehydrating, my lagtime was only about 10-12 hours. The wort was oxygenated as well...

Tbh, I have been using strictly from the Safale line for the most part and I never rehydrate anymore. It doesn't seem to buy me anything really and it is just one more container to sanitize, and the water as well. Which to me produces a greater risk than just pitching the dry yeast on the wort. I do let the pack warm to pitching temperature, cool the wort to ferment temperature and I pitch at ferment temperature. I am an avid believer that thermally shocking the yeast is never a good idea.

Got Trub? said:

The higher the gravity of your wort the fewer viable cells will remain. The reason for this is that the dried yeast cell membranes are not able to control what solutes (sugar) and ions can cross their membranes which either kills them outright or severely injures them. Once rehydrated they can pick and choose what comes in and what goes out.

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After doing a bit of research on the physiology of yeast, this statement makes a lot of sense. Dried yeast cells are not able to control transport of solutes across their cell membranes. Once hydrated, they're able to control such processes. I found hydrating takes maybe an extra 15 minutes of effort and resulted in a very, very short lag time. Shorter lag times = less chance of other bugs getting a foot-hold in the wort.

drayman86 said:

After doing a bit of research on the physiology of yeast, this statement makes a lot of sense. Dried yeast cells are not able to control transport of solutes across their cell membranes. Once hydrated, they're able to control such processes. I found hydrating takes maybe an extra 15 minutes of effort and resulted in a very, very short lag time. Shorter lag times = less chance of other bugs getting a foot-hold in the wort.

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I'm not disagreeing, but the lag time can be too short sometimes. The yeast need some time to get prepared...

If you want a very short lag time, rehydrate the yeast before hand, and about half way into the boil pour off a pint from the boiler chill it down to pitching temps and add it to the hydrated yeast, in the remaining time it takes to boil the wort and cool it the yeast have woken up and got used to the suagr makeup etc of your wort. Pitch and stand back , this technique gives me incredibly short lag times.

Soulive21 said:

I'm not disagreeing, but the lag time can be too short sometimes. The yeast need some time to get prepared...

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While there are exceptions to every rule...the shorter the lag time, the better. The yeast don't need to get prepared. If the colony is healthy, it will begin fermenting immediately - nothing wrong with that. If the colony is weak, lag time will increase as the yeast goes through an initial reproduction phase.

Here's the exception:
If you're looking for high ester production and flavors associated with stressed yeast, you probably want to underpitch slightly and intentionally draw the lag time out a bit.

It is my understanding that yeast will reproduce under aerobic conditions (oxygen present) and go into full anaerobic mode (feasting on sugar) when the O2 is used up. This is a true (or not) regardless of whether you pitch 3 cells or a billion. The difference is, each cell is only capable of doing so much work. If you underpitch and provide too little oxygen, all the yeast will crap out before the work is done.

Yeast + O2 = More yeast made, then ferment.
Yeast - O2 = No more yeast, but fast to feast (you like that? I came up with it all by myself, haha).

I think a good pitch and ferment is about striking a balance. Jamil makes the point that the aerobic portion of the yeast cycle adds a desirable flavor characteristic to the beer so pitching enough yeast for a full ferment into a wort with no O2 will ferment all the way out but may be missing "something".

If you pitch dry yeast directly into a very well oxygenated wort, you're basically killing half the colony to start with but providing them with enough O2 to make a comeback. This WILL result in a longer lag absolutely not debatable.

If you rehydrate first and still provide reasonable O2, the colony starts strong, uses up all the available O2 quickly, and has the cell count to ferment sooner and completely.

You COULD pitch 10 packs of yeast (or a huge slurry) into a completely anaerobic wort and it would start fermenting immediately with no lag. (possibly missing a certain flavor profile in the process)

I did a 10 gallon batch of Edwort's house ale Sunday. My LHBS doesn't have Nottingham, so I tried Safale 04 on 5 gallons and Safale 05 on the other.

On both, I opened the packages dumped it in and didn't even stir. By Monday morning, both were fermenting away nicely with the airlock bubbling away every second or so on both.

I've tried hydrating vs not hydrating and found it isn't worth the bother for me. Of course, it may make a difference if you're making a big beer, but for a lighter ale, just dumping it in is sufficient.

Rich the Brewer said:

I did a 10 gallon batch of Edwort's house ale Sunday. My LHBS doesn't have Nottingham, so I tried Safale 04 on 5 gallons and Safale 05 on the other.

On both, I opened the packages dumped it in and didn't even stir. By Monday morning, both were fermenting away nicely with the airlock bubbling away every second or so on both.

I've tried hydrating vs not hydrating and found it isn't worth the bother for me. Of course, it may make a difference if you're making a big beer, but for a lighter ale, just dumping it in is sufficient.

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Similar deal here. I sprinkled US-05 into EdWort's Haus on saturday, with no stiring and it took off in no more than 12 hours. My wort was oxygenated though...