How long before I pour the pack into the 2L starter wort do I need to activate the pack? It is in the fridge right now. Can I pull it out, smack the pack, boil the starter wort, cool it then mix? I want to start tonight but I only have an hour. Can I start now to keep brew day on schedule for Thursday? (I need to decant and build up.)
Wyeast smackpack & yeast starter
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I'd let it warm up to room temperature before you pitch, so as not to shock the yeast. "Smacking" a wyeast package doesn't actually activate anything. It's just a nutrient broth with a small amount of wort. The wort gets fermented by the yeast, which causes it to swell. It's a nice indication that the yeast is healthy, but it doesn't actually do anything to "turn on" the yeast. They're already ready to go.
Thursday seems a touch tight, but fine.
Thursday seems a touch tight, but fine.
Why do you need to decant and build?
Do you have a stir plate?
Do you have a stir plate?
Mr. Malty says I need 283 billion yeast cells. No stir plate but I do have a 1 month old daughter so we will give it a good vigorous swirl every two hours overnight and then even more frequently during the day. My thought is start tonight, chill in 24 hours (Tuesday night), decant and add fresh wort wednesday afternoon. Is 24 hours sufficient to ensure fermentation is complete before I chill? Is 14-16 hours of chilling enough to allow the yeast cake to settle out?
I like to do 48 hours and 48 hours, but 24 hours should be enough time to build up. You'll lose some yeast if you decant after only 14-16 hours, but that shouldn't be terrible unless you are talking about a relatively low floccing yeast.
1056 American Ale. Would I be better off not building up and just letting the fermentation finish and chilling until I pitch in three days?
Also, I just realized my growler for the starter is a half gallon so it looks like I'm working with 1750 ml starter volume.
Also, I just realized my growler for the starter is a half gallon so it looks like I'm working with 1750 ml starter volume.
Unless it's a really big beer, that's probably what I would do. Congrats on the new baby! I was there not long ago. You'll be sleeping again soon enough.
a10t2
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Looks like a 1.75 L starter with frequent swirling will put you at 200-250 billion cells. Should be plenty.
"Shocking" is a concern with pitching warm yeast into cold wort, by the way. No concerns with going the other way. Some research suggests that pitching cold actually increases viability in the wort.
"Shocking" is a concern with pitching warm yeast into cold wort, by the way. No concerns with going the other way. Some research suggests that pitching cold actually increases viability in the wort.
a10t2 said:
Interesting claim...do you have a source? I've always been told shocking goes both ways.
From the horse's mouth.
You don't even really have to smack if you don't want to if you are making a starter, but you definitely don't need to wait for it to inflate. It sound's like you need to be making a decent sized starter, so that's the time you need to factor for, not whether it needs to be smacked or not.
You don't even really have to smack if you don't want to if you are making a starter, but you definitely don't need to wait for it to inflate. It sound's like you need to be making a decent sized starter, so that's the time you need to factor for, not whether it needs to be smacked or not.
I also think it is better to allow 48 h before cold crashing. If I remember correctly from "Yeast," it says that allowing an additional 8-12 h after completion (i.e., 24 h) will enable the cells to build up their glycogen reserves in which they will need to attenuate the beer completely. If I am stepping up a starter, I typically start the process about a week in advance.
SpanishCastleAle
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I have read this as well and my experience seems to agree. I always take a vial/smackpack directly out of the fridge, smack it if it's a smackpack, open it and immediately pitch it into 'just below' room temp wort on a stirplate. Usually takes off within a few hours and does fine after that.
When I wash yeast I take the 1 gallon jar out of the fridge, decant, swirl, and immediately pitch into 'just below' fermentation temp wort and again, takes off really fast and ferments as if it was very healthy.
SpanishCastleAle said:
Like I said before, that's an interesting thought but I remain skeptical without some evidence. Do you remember where you read it? I haven't done a controlled comparison, but I've always read the opposite. Not saying you're wrong, of course.
wildwest450
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I always cold pitch yeast. My lag times have decreased since i've started this practice. There's an article somewhere on a brewery that does it. Sorry so vague, but it does work.
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SpanishCastleAle
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Not really evidence Malfet but here's the post that got me interested in trying it. In one example he pitched at 79* F which is too warm imo but there still seems to be merit to it.
wildwest450 said:
I'm sure it works, I'm just not (yet) convinced that it is a better practice. The only real discussion on the matter that I've been able to find is here, but it unfortunately provides no explanation of mechanism and no real evidence beyond claims that it decreases lag time. Even if that is the case (and your experience seems to confirm it), shorter lag time isn't necessarily a good thing. It just indicates that the yeast decided to start metabolizing sugar sooner rather than later. Pitching at 95F will give you a preposterously fast fermentation and almost no lag, but obviously that's a bad idea.
I don't mean to sound resistant to the claims, nor to suggest that you should do anything differently if you're happy with your results. But, the conventional wisdom that I've always seen is to pitch your yeast within 5 or 10 degrees of your fermentation temp. The idea that a wider variation (hot or cold) can cause the yeast stress jibes with my (limited) understanding of yeast metabolism. I'd love to learn something new and to have that proven wrong.
Edit: @SpanishCastleAle -
looks like we found the same reference.Seven
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For this big of a beer you might also consider pitching more than one package of yeast... assuming you have a LHBS nearby where you can get more in a hurry.
gio
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You should have just enough time. I bought a yeast pack on a Thursday afternoon, smacked it, and pitched it into the starter. The next afternoon (Friday) I added some more wort to let it build up. Late that night, I put it in the fridge to chill it. The next morning I took it out to let it warm up to room temperature and I pitched it late that afternoon (Saturday). It was a high gravity beer (1.088) and I had about 2.5 liters of starter and it worked fine.
SpanishCastleAle
Well-Known Member
Here's Dr. Clayton Cone's (Lallemand/Danstar) best guess at why cold-pitching works:
Ok then, change of plans. Prepare 1800ml starter tonight (Tuesday). Chill Wednesday night through Thursday afternoon. Decant, then pitch cold yeast into 1800ml new wort. Chill Friday afternoon. Decant Saturday evening before beginning my boil and pitch slightly chilled yeast into 73 degree wort. It's my first starter and my fourth beer so I don't want to beat myself up over it. Please tell me if my plan is absolutely foolish... Otherwise, humor me.
Great stuff SpanishCastleAle. His explanation raises more questions than answers at this point, but it is a great start. I hadn't really considered trehalose reserves. I've always thought of trehalose as just another storage sugar, like glycogen. Looks like it has a different role than that. Thanks man! 
SpanishCastleAle
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That might work IF the first starter takes off fast enough, if it doesn't it won't be ready for the chill on Wednesday night. That second step should take off and ferment faster than the first step because the yeast are 'ready' and you've grown a lot of yeast in first step. And you don't need to decant until you pitch the yeast. Just wait until you're ready to pitch, decant almost all the liquid (leaving just enough to make the slurry pourable), swirl it up and pitch.
Malfet, searching 'cold pitching yeast' gets some hits and that Danstar site was near the top, there were others that I intend to read but was busy last night. TBH, I'm lazy and cold-pitching is a tiny bit easier so that's prob one reason I was interested in trying it. I usually try to chill below fermentation temp, pitch, then let it slowly rise to fermentation temp and usually the batch takes off before it gets there (like low 60s F).
The cone stuff is fascinating. It makes sense that if the yeast is warm enough to be active it's going to start eating up it's reserves, including what it most needs to adapt to the next environment. I wonder how long "almost immediately" is before it builds up Trehalose. 1 hour? 12? Can we crash cool our starter for a few hours and have that Trehalose built up?
Crash cooling is definitely the way to build trehalose, but my understanding is that it takes more on the order of 48 hours. That's what Chris White seems to indicate in his yeast book, at least.
My question now is...If I pull my starter from the fridge to warm up and add a bit of dme to get the yeast going again (my current procedure; sort of a combination of the crash+decant and pitch-at-high-krausen methods), does it still consume it's trehalose? In other words, does the yeast preferentially consume trehalose reserves or environmental sugars?
SpanishCastleAle
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He says 'Almost immediately upon the cold storage of the yeast, trehalose begins to build up...' but that's a good question as to how long it takes before diminishing returns aren't worth waiting any longer. I've kind of just went with 24 hours but that was based on a passing comment in a not-so-old Zymurgy article on lagers that letting a starter (fermented at room temp) sit in the fridge for 24 hours was beneficial for the yeast.
That Zymurgy comment + the 'cold-pitching' threads + me being a lazy ass = me chilling all starters for 24 hours in the fridge and just pitching straight outta the fridge. The success of it is why I keep doing it.
Indeed. I'm thinking of switching my procedure over based on this thread. I still have a lot of questions, but I'm starting to be convinced. I'm curious about the nature of "stress factors". Generally, these are talked about as if they are the devil, but here Cone is suggesting that at least trehalose is an example of good stress.
As a side note, I'd really like to do a controlled test on this, but I'm not sure what that would look like. I don't want to use lag time as an indicator, just because I don't think lag time is a direct indicator of anything I care about. Short of picking up a mass spectrometer next time I'm at the store, I suppose it would have to be a qualitative taste test. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but I'd just end up with too many variables, I think.
a10t2
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Obviously I'm late to the party, but this is the study I was referencing: http://md1.csa.com/partners/viewrec...&recid=67781AN&q=&uid=790350815&setcookie=yes
Unfortunately the full text isn't online.
Cool stuff. I'll see if I can get one of my universities to dig that up for me. Anybody know anything more about trehalose? It's one of those things I hear mentioned a lot, but never with much for specifics. Superficial readings seem to suggest that it's a quick-energy sugar, which makes sense in this context. It would also seem to suggest that it's a good thing to have going into a reproduction phase.
Similar to glycogen, trehalose is also synthesized from glucose-6-phosphate. It is thought to be associated with conditions of stress (i.e., starvation, heat shock, etc.). Therefore, it is considered to be a stress protectant rather than a food reserve. The amount of trehalose in a yeast cell can be used to measure its vitality and viability.
Reference: "Brewing" by Ian Spencer Hornsey
Reference: "Brewing" by Ian Spencer Hornsey
Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but doesn't leaving the yeast in the included nutrient inside the packet cause a mini-reproductive cycle? If you pitch the packet yeast into the starter immediately after smacking the packet, aren't you forgoing the mini-repro cycle and therefore pitching less yeast cells than you could be?
Yeah, I've gotten that far with my casual research, too...but how does it play out? Usually, we talk about stress factors as a bad thing. Why is trehalose good?
It's a pretty trivial amount of sugar. I don't know this for certain, but I suspect that the yeast does not undergo significant amounts of reproduction in order to metabolize it. It'd be like pitching yeast into a two tablespoon starter.
kanzimonson
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The way I've heard it explained is anytime yeast sense a decrease in temp, they prepare to go dormant - building up and storing glycogen, and creating a protein coat to protect them while hibernating. An increase in temp just means their metabolic processes work faster.
I always take a cold smack pack from the fridge, activate it, and then immediately pour it into a room temp starter.
I always take a cold smack pack from the fridge, activate it, and then immediately pour it into a room temp starter.
Well, if this works then it's good news for me. I won't have to wait a couple of days to pitch into the starter, 'cause that's what I'm doing now (like, right now today).
wildwest450
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Scientific mumbo jumbo, you could stop wasting the internet space and just listened to me a page ago.
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wildwest450 said:Scientific mumbo jumbo, you could stop wasting the internet space and just listened to me a page ago.
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I've found that sacrificing a chicken to the goddess Ninkasi each morning has improved my brewing considerably
wildwest450
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Sarcasm noted, but that's not a brewing technique.
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wildwest450 said:
That wasn't meant to be snarky, so apologies if it came off that way. I just mean to say that there's plenty of superstition in brewing, and it's tough to know what's what. There's plenty of stuff that I do just because it has worked well for me in the past, but I still think it's worth understanding what's happening.
kanzimonson
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What temp should I perform my chicken sacrifice at?
