I've started rinsing yeast on a couple of recent beers and had good success. So far I've only done it for big beers and lagers, where a very high pitch rate is necessary, and my strategy has been to pitch as much as I'm able to harvest. Now I'm brewing a more average beer that I plan to ferment with harvested US-05, and am wondering whether I'm at risk of overpitching.
My rinsing technique is pretty basic- after bottling my last beer I poured ~3 quarts of boiled and cooled water back into the carboy, shook it up, and left it on its side. After I saw a layer of sediment starting to form I poured the top liquid layer off into 3 quart-sized jars and stuck them in the fridge. A week later they now look like this.
Each jar appears to have about 75 ml of solid sediment, about half of which seems to be viable yeast. The beer I'm brewing will be a 5.5 gal 1.062 red rye IPA. Per Mr. Malty I want 193 billion cells; if max out the thickness and non-yeast percentage sliders that would require 64 ml of slurry, so perhaps one jar after pouring off the liquied. However, I think there's much more than 25% non-yeast in these and I really have no idea how thick this is. My instinct is that underpitching has a much greater impact on the beer than overpithing, and so I should use 2 or maybe all three of these jars. In researching this I've seen a bunch of people say that homebrewers don't need to worry about overpitching unless they pitch directly onto a yeast cake. If I pitch all or most of this that seems pretty much like what I'm doing, although I'd guess the act of rinsing reduced my cell count somewhat.
Any insight is appreciated- specifically, how much of this yeast would you pitch? More generally, when you repitch is it better to try and hit your pitch rate exactly, or 'round up' to avoid an overpitch? And, is there a more precise way to figure out where to put those sliders on mrmalty?
My rinsing technique is pretty basic- after bottling my last beer I poured ~3 quarts of boiled and cooled water back into the carboy, shook it up, and left it on its side. After I saw a layer of sediment starting to form I poured the top liquid layer off into 3 quart-sized jars and stuck them in the fridge. A week later they now look like this.
Each jar appears to have about 75 ml of solid sediment, about half of which seems to be viable yeast. The beer I'm brewing will be a 5.5 gal 1.062 red rye IPA. Per Mr. Malty I want 193 billion cells; if max out the thickness and non-yeast percentage sliders that would require 64 ml of slurry, so perhaps one jar after pouring off the liquied. However, I think there's much more than 25% non-yeast in these and I really have no idea how thick this is. My instinct is that underpitching has a much greater impact on the beer than overpithing, and so I should use 2 or maybe all three of these jars. In researching this I've seen a bunch of people say that homebrewers don't need to worry about overpitching unless they pitch directly onto a yeast cake. If I pitch all or most of this that seems pretty much like what I'm doing, although I'd guess the act of rinsing reduced my cell count somewhat.
Any insight is appreciated- specifically, how much of this yeast would you pitch? More generally, when you repitch is it better to try and hit your pitch rate exactly, or 'round up' to avoid an overpitch? And, is there a more precise way to figure out where to put those sliders on mrmalty?
