Yeast Question

I'm brewing my second-ever batch tomorrow, and I'm a little unsure about the amount of yeast to use.

I formulated a recipe using the calculator on Brewer's Friend which is loosely based (or, at least, somewhat similar) from Stone's RUINATION.

I have two smack packs of American Ale yeast, which says 100 billion cells on each package. But the calculator suggested I need 190 billion yeast cells.

Do I pitch both packages? It's a big beer, so they have a lot of work to do, and I don't want to stress them out too much. But the package itself says one package only per five gallon batch of beer. For this batch, I'm not using a yeast starter, although I might try one on the next beer I brew.

Any advice on this would be great.

 

Here ya go.....

http://www.mrmalty.com/calc/calc.html

 

That was fast. Thanks.

So, it looks like I need three smack packs, but I only have two. This might be an obvious question, but do I absolutely have to wait until I can get more Ale yeast? Can I just pitch the two? Or should I do a starter with just one?

I was all ready to brew tomorrow, but I will wait if I have to.

 

post your recipe so we can help you determine that for sure.....

 

3.3 lbs. LME extra light
3.3 lbs. LME light
3.3 lbs. LME amber
1 lb. corn sugar
1 lb. crystal malt (steeping)
1 oz. Centennial 60 min.
1 oz. Citra 30 min.
0.5 oz. Chinook 30 min.
1 oz. Cascade 15 min.
1.5 oz. Chinook 15 min.
1 oz. Cascade at flameout.
Primary ferment at least 7 days. Secondary ferment also 7 days.
1 oz. Cascade dry hop (7 days)
1 oz. Cascade dry hop (5 days)

Boil size: 5 gallons. Batch size: 5 gallons. Steeping grains at 150 degrees for a half hour. Late malt additions. Topping up with cold spring water and cooling wort with ice bath. Pitching yeast at 65 degrees. OG is 1.084 and target FG is 1.021 according to the calculator. Bottle conditioning for 3 weeks. Fermentation temp should be around 65-70 degrees. I might rearrange the hop schedule a little, but the amounts will probably stay the same.

I have two smack packs of Wyeast American Ale 1056 yeast.

 

Just pitch them both you should be good.

The real issue is how old the packs are and how well they have been stored. Assuming they are fresh and been stored correctly you should have no problem.

If you really want to help it along, take a pound of any of those extracts, and boil it up in a gallon of wort, cool and pitch the yeast tonight. Aerate well. This would basically be making a starter. You can put this in your large fermenter if you wanted, and then tomorrow, just pour your fresh wort straight on to it, aerate and ferment as normal.

If you check Mr.Malty, you might be able to get away with doing this with a single pack and save the other for another beer.

 

My beer has been bubbling away through the airlock and things are looking good (smelling good, too). But I have one more yeast question.

When fermentation is complete, I'm going to rack to a secondary for the first time. I was wondering how much yeast from the primary should go into the secondary.

Is there a hard and fast rule for that? Does it depend on what kind of beer it is?

 

You will get all the yeast you need by racking the beer and leaving all the sediment behind. That is, if you feel you need to do a secondary at all. You can just leave the beer in primary for 2 weeks to a month then bottle.

 

Ah. Okay. I had seen somewhere that people siphon a small amount of the caked yeast at the bottom to "keep it going" and have enough for priming bottles. But it makes sense there would be enough floating around in there anyway. Thanks for the reply.

I'm using the secondary mostly for dry-hopping and clarity purposes. But it will stay in the primary until the airlock stops bubbling and my FG is where I want it for a few days, as per suggestions I've read around these parts.