Yeast health/life

From everything I have been reading, and continue to read it seems like yeast is a very durable, yet fickle beast.

Some accounts and articles highlight yeast as being fragile and very susceptible to dying off because of conditions, time, lack of food, too much food, temperature...etc etc...

Other passages say that yeast can do just fine in a primary/secondary for 3, 4, 5, even more weeks untouched.

At what point should you worry about your yeast being in trouble/dying off?

So if I keep my wort in my secondary with no extra fermentables added to the secondary, and leave it for a couple of weeks I won't have to worry about pitching more yeast at bottling time? I guess that's what I'm mostly worried about.

Modern yeast is pretty hardy stuff. Most of the "yeast fear" that folks has, comes from brewing books that were written 30 years ago when homebrewing was still illegal in the US and there was not a fresh supply of yeast available. And the yeast we had came in hot cargo ships from other parts of the world and might have sat on shelves for god knows how long.

Modern yeast that we get these days is fresh and grown under much better and more scientific environments.

But even without that, yeast is still pretty hardy stuff.

I subscribe to the idea that if beer can be brewed with 45 million year old yeast harvested from amber, that existed in all manner of conditions, our modern yeast is pretty indestructable.

I worry more about yeaat producing off flavors because of high temp or pH conditions than dying off...

Flike01 said:

So if I keep my wort in my secondary with no extra fermentables added to the secondary, and leave it for a couple of weeks I won't have to worry about pitching more yeast at bottling time? I guess that's what I'm mostly worried about.

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Unless it's a high grav beer and/or you've been in secondary for 8 months or more there's plenty of yeas to do the job.

Why didn't you ask this DIRECTLY?

I have primaried beer on the yeast for up to six weeks, and I will say so far, that my experience is that leaving the beer on the yeast actually accelerates the maturation or conditioning process of the beer. This is for styles where you are looking for a clean profile.

English beers I pull off the yeast before they can clean up fully......that seems to be the trick to getting good esthers for bitters and esb.

Oddly enough, with belgians I do not find this to be the case..

Revvy said:

Why didn't you ask this DIRECTLY?

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Since I have started, I have been very curious/cautious about yeast in general. It was one of the biggest mysteries to me and though I had one primary concern, I wanted to learn to further myself as a brewer in general.

I certainly want to ween myself off of these ingredient kits soon...they feel far too much like training wheels

Well your yeast is perhaps the most important ingredient in your beer, so a healthy yeast is a must if u want to produce great beers, but that is just a starting point.

Think of your yeast as a seed a your wort as the soil. The yeast will need proper conditions to turn the wort into beer just as a seed needs proper soil/growing conditions to grow into a strong plant. So your yeast needs proper nutrition (fermentables, minerals, and sanitary conditions) as well as proper temperature control. So if u are using a dry yeast make sure u have a good starter, and also make sure youre fermenting in the proper range, without large temp swings which can stress out the yeast and produce off flavors.

I like to use luquid yeast, normally Wyeast in smack packs. I activate about 4 hrs before pitching, i use yeast nutrient and 5.2 pH buffer in my wort, and ferment at proper temps, and always have quick and clean fermentation. The main thing i need to work on now is controlling the temp!

Hm...interesting. You see, I read a lot about liquid yeasts, yet I'm a little afraid to dive into them because they seem more complicated, with a larger variety of them. However, if you have any advice on how to dip my toe into the yeast newbie pool (yeeesh...that sounds unappetizing) I'd love it, because I'm about to start an Imperial Blonde Ale which I'm very positive will have a much higher OG than 1.030...and I'm a little nervous about this one since it's going to be a little more intense of a wort than I've dealt with yet.

Flike01 said:

Hm...interesting. You see, I read a lot about liquid yeasts, yet I'm a little afraid to dive into them because they seem more complicated, with a larger variety of them. However, if you have any advice on how to dip my toe into the yeast newbie pool (yeeesh...that sounds unappetizing) I'd love it, because I'm about to start an Imperial Blonde Ale which I'm very positive will have a much higher OG than 1.030...and I'm a little nervous about this one since it's going to be a little more intense of a wort than I've dealt with yet.

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Liquid yeast is no harder than dry, except you have to understand that there's rarely enough yeast in a single tube or smack pack to do the job. The mr malty calculator I referenced earlier will easily tell you how much yeast you need to grow, or ACTUAL amount of smack packs or tubes you'll need.

Which means you might have to plan ahead a day or three and make and feed your starter to achieve the desired cell count.

But making a starter, and subsequently feeding them is as simple as this picture.



Basically 2 cups water, 1/2 cup extract, boil, cool and pitch yeast into...You can get fancy and use stir plates and stuff, but breweries have been making starters without them since even BEFORE the German Purity law.

A starter multiplies the quantity of yeast in the solution, it doesn't just wake up the yeast. A 1/2 gallon starter will more than double the amount of yeast that was originally in the smack pack.

Haha, this is great. Starter/no starter...however you want to roll, the important thing is active cell count. If you prefer to buy a bunch of smack packs, awesome. Most people do starters to build up their cell count instead of buying cell count. Brew how you want.

As for Reinheitsgebot...were they pitching white labs into E-flasks with boiled DME? Of course not. Were they "pitching" large volumes of fresh, active yeast (either top cropping, common vessels, slurry, etc)? Absolutely...in essence using a prior batch as a starter for the next.

The rest is just semantics.

3sheetsEMJ said:

Please explain where i was in err?

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3sheetsEMJ said:

So if u are using a dry yeast make sure u have a good starter

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I like to use luquid yeast, normally Wyeast in smack packs. I activate about 4 hrs before pitching, i use yeast nutrient and 5.2 pH buffer in my wort, and ferment at proper temps, and always have quick and clean fermentation.

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3sheetsEMJ said:

Think about what a yeast starter is. Its basically waking up the yeast from a dormant state to a state where they will be active and healthy, which all of my processes help to that cause.

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Ever heard of reinheitsgebot? Aka German purity law of 1512? Says only ingredients in german beer is hops barley and water. See anything missing?

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the last quote is technically right, to the point that they didn't even understand yeast, but doesn't really apply to modern practice because they didn't even understand yeast.

Revvy seemed to simply be pointing out that your advice was flawed, which i am too. dry yeast doesn't need a starter, in fact, it's recommended not to make starters with dry. a starter is more than 'waking yeast up', that's what a smack pack's for. a starter is to grow the few dozen billion (~70 bil in the avg smack pack, not 100) into a few hundred billion which is a much more appropriate pitch rate.

Flike01
Welcome to the brewing hobby


Permo
Unionrdr
Thank you for remaining civil and attempting to answer the OP’s question.


Revvy
3sheetsEMJ
NordeastBrewer77

Put your friggin handbags down and quit bickering like a bunch of girls in middle school.

Your snarky posts have been deleted. Too bad, because along with the snarks, some valid material was also wiped.

I agree in the sense they didnt understand it. I was just saying there will always be the starter/no starter aruguement. I regret bring up the purity law, so lets just drop that, it really is moot at this point.

Also everything i have read abiut yeast is that it does wake up, or rather goes through varopus stages of fermentation including: wake up(activation and multiplication), aerobic fermentatoon- which is why you need aerated wort, and theb anerobic where they consume then simple sugars and tiurn it into ethanol, also why you dont want oxygen in your beer after the first few days. So i guess its the first stage we're discussing. Thoughts?

Yes, a starter will give your yeast a chance to wake up and multiply to a proper pitch rate depending on the size of the starter you make. Then when you decant and pitch the starter into your 5 gallon batch you can rest assured that the yeast is active and ready to chow down on the wort without delay.

So Revvy -- according to what you're saying and your picture that you posted, am I understanding it right that you are supposed to make virtually a very miniature batch of your wort in which you apply the liquid yeast to, which is called a starter? If this is the case, I'm assuming you want to use the same type of malt extract then that would be in your larger wort batch? If I'm completely missing the point, I apologize -- I know it can be frustrating trying to explain the alphabet to the illiterate

Flike01 said:

So Revvy -- according to what you're saying and your picture that you posted, am I understanding it right that you are supposed to make virtually a very miniature batch of your wort in which you apply the liquid yeast to, which is called a starter? If this is the case, I'm assuming you want to use the same type of malt extract then that would be in your larger wort batch? If I'm completely missing the point, I apologize -- I know it can be frustrating trying to explain the alphabet to the illiterate

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If you're planning to pitch the entire contents of the starter keep it as light or lighter than your batch you will be pitching it into. Most of us stick the starter in the fridge a day or so in advance so the yeast settles out into the bottom of the starter then when pitching time comes we take the starter out of the fridge and pour off most of the liquid on top leaving the yeast behind. When this has warmed up to around the same temp as the beer we're putting it in pitch the yeast at the bottom into the wort.

I just don't like the idea of pouring a starter that has been shaken, stir plated etc and fermented at room temp (75-78 degrees here) into beer. Even for a 1Liter starter that's ~5% of a 5.5 gallon beer.

Flike01 said:

Hm...interesting. You see, I read a lot about liquid yeasts, yet I'm a little afraid to dive into them because they seem more complicated, with a larger variety of them. However, if you have any advice on how to dip my toe into the yeast newbie pool (yeeesh...that sounds unappetizing) I'd love it, because I'm about to start an Imperial Blonde Ale which I'm very positive will have a much higher OG than 1.030...and I'm a little nervous about this one since it's going to be a little more intense of a wort than I've dealt with yet.

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Don't automatically think liquid is better then dry. The only time I use liquid is if Ian USB a strain not available in dry form. Liquid does have more variety.

But your basic ales dry is more then sufficient IMO. And much cheaper as easier.

Flike01 said:

So Revvy -- according to what you're saying and your picture that you posted, am I understanding it right that you are supposed to make virtually a very miniature batch of your wort in which you apply the liquid yeast to, which is called a starter? If this is the case, I'm assuming you want to use the same type of malt extract then that would be in your larger wort batch? If I'm completely missing the point, I apologize -- I know it can be frustrating trying to explain the alphabet to the illiterate

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Swampass is right, you really want to use the lightest possible. But if you're going to decant (pour off most of the starter beer, leaving just the yeast to pitch in your beer) it doesn't really matter if you use darker or lighter or whatever, it really is such a small amount that unless you're brewing like a pale lager, it won't taint the flavor of your finished beer.

ANother thing folks are using if they don't have extract to make starters is a product that is becoming pretty easily available, it used to be just in mexican mercados, but these days even big box grocery stores are carrying it in their ethnic grocery isles.



It basically is lightly hopped unfermented wort. It taste like crap but it works for making starters.

Revvy said:

It taste like crap but it works for making starters.

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+1 Hahaha, tell that to all the people that buy it. (which they obviously do if big box stores carry it)

Interesting...I honestly would probably look into that Malta Goya (I swear that I may have even seen it before) if I get into a situation where I want to use liquid yeast. It really seems like it's a quarter of the trouble that boiling a small volume of wort would be. I don't know...maybe it just seems that way to me because I am so new to the process, but usually when I get wort working, it's a pretty big process for me.