Pitching Rates for beers with incremental sugar additions

I am brewing up a beer with an OG around 1.090, then I am going to feed 3-5 pounds sugar to the fermenter (its a belgian) basically until the yeast has had enough. Here is my question

Do I pitch enough yeast for a 1.090 beer (pre sugar) or 1.120 to 1.030 beer (post sugar)?

I am leaning towards pitching at the post sugar rate since these yeast are going to get stressed out by the alcohol and work from fermenting such a large beer.

I agree with your logic. You'll probably be okay with the lower pitching as well, but I like having lots of yeasties.

I remember reading in Brew Like A Monk that some of the trappist breweries are actually pitching slightly lower than "standard pitching rates." But of course there's the commercial vs. homebrew argument, blah blah.

It's not like you're being one of these lazy people pitching on top of an entire yeast cake and risking crazy overpitching.

And for me, the risk of overpitching is that you get less estery, yeasty flavors during the growth phase, but how concerned can you be about a belgian yeast not having enough flavor?

Do it!

kanzimonson said:

I agree with your logic. You'll probably be okay with the lower pitching as well, but I like having lots of yeasties.

I remember reading in Brew Like A Monk that some of the trappist breweries are actually pitching slightly lower than "standard pitching rates." But of course there's the commercial vs. homebrew argument, blah blah.

It's not like you're being one of these lazy people pitching on top of an entire yeast cake and risking crazy overpitching.

And for me, the risk of overpitching is that you get less estery, yeasty flavors during the growth phase, but how concerned can you be about a belgian yeast not having enough flavor?

Do it!

Click to expand...

I really love the way WLP500 when pitched at a proper rate and fermented around 65 tastes, it is almost spicy, peppery, earthy to me with less of the fruity esters. It may sound odd but I get some of the same earthiness that I taste with goat cheese. That is what I am shooting for in this beer (belgian imperial stout), I am brewing this with full intentions of submitting for competition in April. So I want to run this fermentation perfectly. O2 at pitch, 02 again after 12 hours, extra nutrient after 36 hours and nutrient with every sugar addition. Then after the 5th sugar addition I am going to ramp the temp up from 65 to 72 and hope it finishes good and dry but by that time the yeast might be pretty much done.....I know hoping for 1.020 is stretchin it, but I think if I do everything right I can get it. I wish I had a glass carboy big enough for this one as I would like to watch it visually, but I am putting this pig in my 9 gallon plastic fermenter and giving it 40 day primary before bottle conditioning for a very long time

I made a dubbel with that strain and got some serious vanilla buttercream icing flavor. It was awesome.

I'm a little scared of how much sugar you're going to be adding - it would really suck for the yeast to kick out and be left with a sweet beer, but I guess 1.120 isn't absurd for a strong belgian.

Have you listened to the Dogfish 120 episode of Can You Brew It? He was using a conical so for each new sugar addition he would drop some yeast, add the sugar, whisk it all up, and then dump into the top. I think the whisking helped re-suspend the yeast and probably added a little O2. I wonder if you could approximate some of this? Maybe make the full yeast starter, but then reserve 10-20% of it, and before beginning the sugar additions get the extra yeast rockin on a stirplate?

kanzimonson said:

I made a dubbel with that strain and got some serious vanilla buttercream icing flavor. It was awesome.

I'm a little scared of how much sugar you're going to be adding - it would really suck for the yeast to kick out and be left with a sweet beer, but I guess 1.120 isn't absurd for a strong belgian.

Have you listened to the Dogfish 120 episode of Can You Brew It? He was using a conical so for each new sugar addition he would drop some yeast, add the sugar, whisk it all up, and then dump into the top. I think the whisking helped re-suspend the yeast and probably added a little O2. I wonder if you could approximate some of this? Maybe make the full yeast starter, but then reserve 10-20% of it, and before beginning the sugar additions get the extra yeast rockin on a stirplate?

Click to expand...

Maybe I create a third 1 gallon yeast starter and when I start adding sugar additions I could just throw the entire 1 gallon starter in to supplement my stressed out yeast population? I could just create yeast, sugar, nutrient, slurries like you are suggesting as well.....that may be the best solution.