Wyeast vs. White Labs

Hey all,

Yesterday I started a batch of what I hoped to be similar to Goose Island's Harvest Ale (quite tasty). I emailed my LHBS ahead of time to make sure he had everything in stock since I'm about 45 minutes away. He had everything I asked for, except the Wyeast 1968. Instead he had White Labs WLP002, which I purchased.

So anyway, I started the batch, got it chilled down to 80F, and pitched the yeast which had been warming up for a few hours.

The past few batches I've done with smack packs have started bubbling after no more than about 12 hours. It's been 20 now with the White Labs.

This is NOT one of those "my brew isn't fermenting and it's been forever, what do I do?" threads. I'm just curious if anyone's noticed a difference between the smack packs and the pitchable tubes as far as how long it takes for visible fermentation to start.

I use white labs most (their labs are in san diego) because I think i'm probably getting a fresher product. that aside i always make a starter for both wyeast and white labs

Yeah, no starter here. I s'pose I better get in the habit of planning ahead a little better. I had an unexpected work-free day (weather related) and thought I'd rather spend Sunday with my wife rather than on the patio, so it was kind of a spur of the moment decision to brew.

+1 on starters with White Labs (and Wyeast, too, for that matter). It's probably more important with White Labs, though, since they don't come with the yeast nutrient (the "pack" in the smackpack) to produce more cells and get the yeasties ready for work.

With ANY liquid yeast, pack OR tube it is recommended to make a starter.

aking a starter first insures that your yeast is still alive and viable before you dump it in your beer. You will be less likely to start one of those "is my yeast dead?" threads that are on here every day.

You will also ensure that you have enough yeast usually the tubes and smack packs are a lot less yeast that you really should use for healthy fermentation.

If you look at and use Mr Malty's pitch rate calculator you can see how much yeast you SHOULD be using for the grav of your beer. http://www.mrmalty.com/calc/calc.html you wil find that what's in the tubes or smack pack is usually way under what you should be using.

Making a starter also usually means your ber will take off sooner, because the first thing that the little buggers do in the presence of wort (whether in a flask or in a fermenter) is have an orgy to reproduce enough cells to do the job...So it won't take such a long time in the fermenter since they started doing it in the flask.

Additionally it is better for the yeast to consume and reproduce incrementally rather than just dumping them into the fermenter...The yeast will be less stressed out than if you just dump them in.

Stressed out yeast can lead to a lot of off flavors...maybe even (though rare) the dreaded autolysis....Or the curse of 1.030....getting a stuck fermentation because the yeast have bit the dust.

So making a starter proves your yeast is still healthy, allows you to grow enough yeast to do the job, cuts down on lag time, and ensures that you will not get off flavors or stuck ferementations from stressed out yeast.

i don't think White Labs or Wyeast necessarily has more cells. Aren't they both around 100 billion? Age is probably more important than brand when determining viable cells.

White Labs vials run 70-140 billion cells. That's ten times as much as when I started brewing.

Wyeast Propagator packs run 25 B, Activator 100 B.

Does Wyeast even make Propagator packs any more?

I've used WLP002 3 or 4 times in the last year when I was doing a run of british style ales. It is extremely flocculent. Sometimes when you pour your tube of yeast straight into the wort (no starter) the yeast will just flocculate out and sit on the bottom twiddling their fingers. I say if nothing happens, give your fermenter a gentle swirl. I never had a problem getting a good fermentation out of them, but you night have to swirl them up every now and then, especially toward the end of fermentation. Not saying this happens everytime with 002, but there is a chance this could happen.

I also hope you cooled them down pretty quickly from 80F as this yeast throws a lot of diacetyl. Give your beer adequate time on the yeast so they can reabsorb some of the diacetyl etc after fermentation is over.

I've used both WL and WY interchangeably in the past and was always happy with the results; recently, though, a close friend/brewer/BJCP Master Judge and I have experienced an unpleasant streak of phenolic character in White Labs strains suggesting poor yeast health when compared to the WY equivalents.

I don't mean to push people away from White Labs, only relay my personal experiences.

Yes on the Propagator packs. Sometimes I wonder if using the Propagator pack would yield better yeast health when using certain sized starters. Sometimes it seems the Activator pack is not quite enough to pitch properly but in order for the starter to yield the right number of cells you have to make a really small starter (using an Activator pack)...which to my understanding can be detrimental to yeast health.

Just so no one has a sleepless night worrying about my brew, I came home and at the 26 hour mark it's bubbling quite nicely. And the exhaust from the airlock smells yummy.

HomerJR said:

Just so no one has a sleepless night worrying about my brew, I came home and at the 26 hour mark it's bubbling quite nicely. And the exhaust from the airlock smells yummy.

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We never lose sleep because we know that 99.5% of the time that's EXACTLY how it turns out....Why the heck do you think we experienced brewers tell you noobs to RELAX, 1,000 times a day?

We never lose sleep because we know that 99.5% of the time that's EXACTLY how it turns out....Why the heck do you think we experienced brewers tell you noobs to RELAX, 1,000 times a day?

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And we truly appreciate it.

It is the great Beer God joke and it works every time. Start a thread about your beer not bubbling and the next time you look it is bubbling.

Homer, I pitched a white labs vial at 5:00 pm on Saturday and today it finally started to bubble.

david_42 said:

White Labs vials run 70-140 billion cells. That's ten times as much as when I started brewing.

Wyeast Propagator packs run 25 B, Activator 100 B.

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That's what they tell you. That's overly optimistic.

I've done cell counts on fresh samples of both manufacturers' product. Both are usually under count by at least 20%, usually 25-30%. The samples selected were the freshest samples on the shelf at several LHBSs.

That means 70-75 billion for the big WYeast packages, and a range of 50-100 billion for White Labs.

Neither is useful for pitching worts of greater OG than ~1.020 (!).

The Rule of Thumb for pitching is 1 million cells per milliliter of wort per degree Plato. That means, for a wort of 1.048 (12P), you need 240 billion cells. That's more than twice what you're likely to find in either package. Heck, that's twice what you'd find if their marketing numbers were truly accurate!

Healthy ferments happen with the correct amounts of healthy yeast. That means not just dumping a smack-pack or vial into your fresh wort, but actually knowing what's going on.

Bob

NQ3X,
Do you have any viability vs. time numbers? I usually use JZ's pitch rate calculator and just go by the 'viability by date'. But by the time I get my yeast packs they have been shipped for a few days (I buy the ice packs but the yeast is warm by the time I get it). So I always wonder if I'm actually starting with way less yeast than that calculation. Starting with 30B cells vs. 60B cells is quite a difference...esp after you multiply that cell count.

I really don't. I didn't plot that when I did the quick survey; I just grabbed the freshest dates in the LHBSs fridges.

JZ's 'by date' algorithm - if that's what it is - is based on solid science, though it's an estimation. Truth be told, anything we do along these lines is an estimation, without doing actual cell counts and methylene blue viability tests.

That's why "always make a starter with liquid yeast" is such an excellent rule of thumb: even if you get the freshest package in the store, even if you trust the manufacturer's marketing, you're not going to get enough to ferment properly. So why bother? Just build up a starter!

Bob

NQ3X said:

That's why "always make a starter with liquid yeast" is such an excellent rule of thumb: even if you get the freshest package in the store, even if you trust the manufacturer's marketing, you're not going to get enough to ferment properly. So why bother? Just build up a starter!

Bob

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+ 1,000,000,000,000,000

NQ3X said:

I really don't. I didn't plot that when I did the quick survey; I just grabbed the freshest dates in the LHBSs fridges.

JZ's 'by date' algorithm - if that's what it is - is based on solid science, though it's an estimation. Truth be told, anything we do along these lines is an estimation, without doing actual cell counts and methylene blue viability tests.

That's why "always make a starter with liquid yeast" is such an excellent rule of thumb: even if you get the freshest package in the store, even if you trust the manufacturer's marketing, you're not going to get enough to ferment properly. So why bother? Just build up a starter!

Bob

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Thanks. I just got my stirplate in the mail so naturally I'm chompin' at the bit to use it and get my yeast count accurate to within a hundred cells or so.

to the OP's main statement, i've used 002 several times, always with starters, and every time i've pitched it, it has a lag time of over 24 but less then 36 hours. I've come to expect it now when i use it, so I barely even check on it until at least 24 hours