Yeast threshold

What is the highest abv that dry yeasts can generally handle...like say...nottingham? I'm not oxygenating the wort with any special tools or anything like that. I'm learing about yeast starters as we speak, but for now I'm planning about a 1.058 OG IPA in the near future. When should I start looking into employing the starter, and saying goodbye to the dry yeast?

Dry and liquid yeasts do not correlate to specific abv thresholds. This is strain dependent, not state dependent. In general however, most beer yeasts are good to 10-12% abv. 1.058 is fine for dry yeast. There is no need to ever ditch dry yeast.... Just use more packs

wonderbread23 said:

Dry and liquid yeasts do not correlate to specific abv thresholds. This is strain dependent, not state dependent. In general however, most beer yeasts are good to 10-12% abv. 1.058 is fine for dry yeast. There is no need to ever ditch dry yeast.... Just use more packs

Click to expand...

Fantastic! And starters aren't to be used with dry yeast, correct? And also, it seems like there isn't really a point in doing that with dry yeast anyway.

You should not use a starter with dry yeast. As a rule of thumb, if your gravity for a 5 gal batch exceeds 1.070 or so, you might want to pitch 2 packs of yeast. 1.058 will be fine to pitch 1 pack.

Most strains of brewing yeast, liquid or dry, will make it 10% ABV with proper care. Some will go higher; many have taken dry yeast such as Safeale US-05 to 12% and beyond.

I have done a several brewers best kits. I have heard nothing but negative comments about the dry yeast packs that come in the kits. The directions say to pitch the yeast right on the wort, but the directions on the yeast packs say to put it in about 1/2 cup of water for 15 min, stir then pitch

What do u guys think is better. I have been doing option 2

Not a knock on Brewer's Best, but the yeast that comes in those packs is less likely (IMO) to have been handled well. Buy yourself a dry pack at the LHBS.

And you should always rehydrate your yeast before pitching. It ensures that the highest number of yeast are ready to go when they hit the wort. If you pitch directly, some of the yeast will be shocked and die or be sluggish.

The problem with the yeast provided with the kits is that there is no information about what to expect from the yeast.

Best practice with any dry yeast is to rehydrate in warm water prior to pitch.

Thanks for the info. Very helpfully

The other thing with the BB kits is...how long has that yeast even been sitting and at what temperature? I've hydrated and I've also pitched dry before.
Here's a question though: what happens if I used 14g instead of 11g of yeast? My LHBS was all out of almost every dry yeast today, so I had to get Cooper's which only comes in 7g packets, so I bought two of them. What are the effects it could have using 14 vs 11 grams?

Moody_Copperpot said:

What are the effects it could have using 14 vs 11 grams?

Click to expand...

About 3g extra yeast.

Seriously, it could border on overpitching depending on the actual viability of the yeast which is impossible to tell lest you get some blue dye and a hemocytometer.

At the most, it reduces the total amount of flavanoid compound production since yeast spooge out the esters and phenols during the growth phase as part of their love juice.

Best case, it made good for any potential dead cells that didn;t fare well during rehydration and reduced the herd of mutant yeast.

I recently heard something on the Brewing Network about overpitching that suggested that it leads to increased ester production. George Fix was definitely the citation, and I think Chris White was the speaker. If I remember correctly, the argument was something like this:

-overpitching means the yeast need to reproduce less to reach optimum population
-because they don't need as much nutrients to reproduce, they then use the available nutrients for other biotic processes, many of which produce esters

When they explained it on the show it was a pretty convincing argument, but regardless of if you believe this or not, we should all agree that there is an optimum pitch rate you should aim for. I doubt you'll have crazy negative effects from pitching 25% extra yeast in this case, but in general you should aim for the correct amount.

The beer I'm brewing is basically a session pale ale for a holiday party. The ABV is only going to be around 3.5% or so. I'm not breaking the bank to brew this beer, it's basically a tweaked version of the Northern Brewer AK-47 which is a tasty, low abv beer. I wonder if my 7g of yeast would work for this even, since the abv is so low.