Any reason not to make starter with dry yeast?

[kiwipen]

I often see that it's not recommended to make a started from dry yeast. that you should just buy more yeast and skip the starter.

It's easier to rehydrate more yeast than it is to make a starter, but is it bad for the yeast health to make a starter with dry yeast?

 

[kh54s10]

The answer is a bit complex. It is generally accepted that making a starter is not good for the health of the yeast. The dry yeast are coated with something that has nutrients and other things to assist the yeast in doing what they do. If you just plop them in a starter all this is stripped from them. There is a lot of talk of what happens to the cell membranes. TBH, it is way above my head.

If you are brewing a beer that requires more. A pack costs about $5. Liquid yeast costs about $9. So two pack of dry yeast will cost About $10. It takes about $3 of DME for a starter so your dry yeast starter now costs $8 Not much of a savings - about $2. The liquid would be $12 for the starter or $18 for 2 packs, a much bigger savings - about $6 If the beer required 3 packs you are now at $27 for multiple packages.

Making a starter for liquid yeast is twofold. One is that there are only about 100 billion cells in a pack. An average ale requires an optimum pitch of in the neighborhood of 200 billion cells. Most dry yeast packs start off with about 200 billion cells so in the case of an average ale you don't need to propagate.

If you do make a starter from dry yeast you should rehydrate it first then make the starter.

 

[lablover]

A number of exbeeriments over on Brulosophy show that a starter does not make different beer, even with high gravity beers. Here is an example. http://brulosophy.com/2017/10/16/ye...-starter-in-high-og-wort-exbeeriment-results/

 

[RM-MN]

With liquid yeast there are fewer cells and since they are in liquid you can add them to wort to make a starter. Dry yeast added directly to wort can weaken it and can kill up to 50% of the yeast because it can't regulate the uptake of the sugars.

With all that, I've tried making beer with a liquid yeast (not readily available here, no LHBS) and a starter. I've rehydrated dry yeast and added that slurry to my fermenter, and I've just dumped the dry yeast into the fermenter and I'd sprinkled the dry yeast on top the foam after pouring the wort into the fermenter. I can't say that I have noticed any remarkable differences in the beer produced. There may be people who can notice the difference or they may be fooling themselves.

 

[Soulshine2]

Ive done both ways , mostly pitch dry yeast on top of the wort in my carboy .
This one time I made a (wort)starter and the entire ferment worried me ,OG numbers were spot on at 1.060,but it stuck , I thought it was done (FG) number 1.020 was too high,then it restarted ,cleared and finished up on day 17 at 1.010. I bottled yesterday .
All I can say from my own personal experience is, try it one way then the other for a different brew (but similar style so the yeast is the same,so you're comparing apples to apples)OR split your batch if you have the means and space for 2 fermenters, pitch a dry in one and a starter in the other half and see what YOUR results are , then go from there. Some guys buy new yeast every brew , while others harvest and continue to grow their own yeast cultures,so its hard to say really .Too many opinions , factors and variables as to why one works and then wont in another brew.

 

[specharka]

With liquid yeast there are fewer cells and since they are in liquid you can add them to wort to make a starter. Dry yeast added directly to wort can weaken it and can kill up to 50% of the yeast because it can't regulate the uptake of the sugars.

With all that, I've tried making beer with a liquid yeast (not readily available here, no LHBS) and a starter. I've rehydrated dry yeast and added that slurry to my fermenter, and I've just dumped the dry yeast into the fermenter and I'd sprinkled the dry yeast on top the foam after pouring the wort into the fermenter. I can't say that I have noticed any remarkable differences in the beer produced. There may be people who can notice the difference or they may be fooling themselves.

Fermentis now advocates pitching dry yeast directly to wort in lieu of rehydration. I’ve done it both ways and noticed no appreciable difference either. It would be nice to see some concrete measurable data that reinforces one method or another.

As far as making starters from dry yeast, I’ve done it with lager yeast before (W-34/70 is almost as expensive as liquid). I think the key is to keep the starter actively fermenting and don’t decant the liquid — pitch everything as a vitality starter and you’ll cut that lag time down.

 

[Sparkncode]

I have done a starter from dry yeast successfully. You do need to do a really big starter to get the multiplication.
I did 3L with intermitant shaking.
I don't worry about lack of nutrieants as i chuck some yeast nutrieant in my main batches boil but its all grain anyway so not a big problem.

Some times its not conveniant to get more dry yeast etc so some times it isn't a cost reason.

Dry yeast is pretty healthy after one brew to be reused so i don't think there are big issues with making a starter provided it is big enough to get the cells you require. eg had one pack but needed two.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

It's easier to rehydrate more yeast than it is to make a starter, but is it bad for the yeast health to make a starter with dry yeast?

Noone's mentioned the real reason not to make starters with dry yeast, which is all to do with aeration.

Without going into too much detail :
Let's say in a typical brew you start with 1/2oz of yeast and end up with 8oz. They've grown 16x in weight, which if all other things are equal means they've doubled 4 times, and need another 16x the stuff that makes a yeast.
Some of the stufff that makes a yeast can be sucked up direct from the wort and used, but the yeast also has to make quite a lot of it from other ingredients.
One of the limiting factors is the availability of sterols, which help make up the cell membrane and which need oxygen for their creation. That's the main reason for oxygenating wort, to enable yeast to make sterols to make cell membrane, which is a key part of cell division and building up yeast mass.

The dry yeast people grow their yeast in a particular way so that they have big reserves of sterols, enough to see them through about 3 cycles of cell division. Which will get them most of the way through a fermentation, even if the wort is not aerated. Whereas the typical liquid yeast or yeast from a starter has no reserves of sterols, so needs aeration just to get enough sterol to start growing.

That's the big difference - if you use dry yeast you don't have to worry too much about aeration, whereas if you make a starter (from dry or liquid yeast) then aeration becomes much more important.

The repitching thing is also somewhat important - the stress of the drying process seems to induce a higher mutation rate in that generation, so you end up getting more petite mutants etc. Plus some dry strains seem to be blends (intentionally or not), so the blend ends up drifting with repitching.

 

[rhys333]

What it boils down to is to make a starter if you don't have enough yeast for your batch size, and don't make a starter otherwise. One dry yeast sachet, vial, or smack pack is more than enough to ferment 5 gallons up to around 1.060. In such cases, a starter is just wasting time and money and adds an unnecessary step that contributes nothing to the quality of the beer except for a small risk of contamination.

 

[Soulshine2]

when I bought my first AG kit in person from the LHBS ,I had one of the employees( also brewer instructor there) walk me through everything. I was there over an hour. He went through the ingredients ,tools/equipment, showed me how to mill (they provide the use of 2 mills, customers are allowed to mill their own on the premises) when I got to the yeast he explained that one dry packet could in fact be plenty for three 5 gallon batches. BUT, I've still always used one entire packet per my batches.

 

[cactusgarrett]

one dry packet could in fact be plenty for three 5 gallon batches

Plenty to ferment, but that's seriously underpitching all three batches.

 

[ThirstyPawsHB]

One option is to make a 6% beer with 1 pack then use the yeast cake for whatever your heart desires. I've done this for 3 generations with no issues.

 

[Soulshine2]

Plenty to ferment, but that's seriously underpitching all three batches.

Im just stating what i was told. Note , i still pitch an entire packet

 

[brewbama]

Nothing saying you can’t make a starter but the question is why? Depending on the answer to that question you may choose or not choose to. Cheers!

 

[BobBailey]

Depending on whether I have multiple packets of a dry yeast strain on hand or not, I will either pitch 2 packets or make a starter. When I do make a starter I rehydrate before adding to the starter wort. Also, I use a pinch of Fermaid-K in the starter and 1/2 to 1 tsp late in the boil just to be safe. If the wort is 1.050 or less OG I trust a single packet.