Silver_Is_Money
Larry Sayre, Developer of 'Mash Made Easy'
It's getting to where dry yeast costs almost as much as liquid yeast. Does anyone know why dry yeast pricing has skyrocketed?
There is lots of information on dry yeast manufacture and testing, available through IBD, MBAA, WBC, and other journals. You can imagine the allure of using dry yeast among large breweries like ABI, Miller, Asahi, ect, was strong and some like Whitbread jumped in head first; a yeast medium that lasts almost indefinitely, takes little space for storage, easy to move from facility to facility, produces the same results.... it should be a major clue that none of those breweries now use dry yeast for regular beer production, even now that the manufacturing process and cost has been streamlined.
Not to draw the ire of the dry yeast mafia, but the process of producing dry yeast is detrimental to the yeast cell. Most dry yeast is grown in molasses type sugars under the crabtree threshold and as such, the yeast never sees alcohol until the first pitch. Some yeast companies put the yeast through trehalose and glycerol hydrolosis to ensure proper lipids and a healthy start; making a starter completely undoes that process. Hence no rehydration. Also, the drying process both shrinks and destroys cell; most dry yeast contains >25% dead cells by weight. So they add more yeast to make up for that. Think about that for a sec. If you were reusing liquid yeast, would you ever pitch a <75% viable culture with the intention of harvesting.... no freaking way. The resulting dry yeast second gen have more petite mutants and the budding scars take up more of the cell since it is smaller, resulting in less than optimal fermentation in successive generations. Also flocculation is generally impaired, with smaller floccs, and more dead yeast in suspension. This can cause haze issues along with other things like autolyis flavors, ect, ect, one could go on forever.
Don't know how much truth is in this. I got this jar of dried bread yeast, open since more than a year.... Poorly closed with a lid that won't really shut. Still works. So the majority still seems to be alive.Sanitation is not that big of a concern, the real issue is with moisture exposure. Dry yeast is extremely hygroscopic and will absorb atmospheric moisture real fast, once its water content rises above a certain threshold it will start degrading pretty quickly. I belive it would be quite difficult to avoid excessive exposure without specialized equipment.
At the boot camp in Asheville I attended two yeast workshops, one put on by Chris White himself (as in the guy who started White Labs). He said he wouldn't make a starter with his yeast, he'd just pitch it in with no starter unless it was a very big beer. Well. You perhaps can imagine my response to this, perplexed as I was.
will work
I've heard this before and it always comes across as self serving on Dr White's part. He is behind the data that says the liquid yeast degrades stupid fast that underpins everyone's yeast calculators. At 3 months past manufacturing date Mr Malty says the yeast is 32% viable. But White Labs continues to provide information regarding starters on their website although it follows this statement...
"One package of White Labs yeast within proper date ranges will work for any 5-gallon batch of beer of any gravity."
OK so here is the interesting thing I found...
With White Labs current packaging 3 month old yeast is over 90% viable...
https://www.whitelabs.com/news/purepitch-shelf-life
Be nice to see the many online calculators updated to include this information
Omg now I don’t want to pitch it at all.
Notice they didn't qualify how well it "will work"
Will it fully attenuate...
How clean will it be...
How long will it take to ferment...
Most of us know that pitching 1 vial into any 5G of wort is bad because we've done it and determined over time that pitching more yeast makes better beer and consequently we've never gone back.
Making a dry yeast starter and repitching dry yeast are also not good practices
I think Dr White might be right and it could be worth trying a single three month old pack (of the new packaging) in batch of 1.050 or so wort and see what happens.
Not true. What evidence do you have to support this?
Edit: I just read your follow up responses. I still don't agree with you - I've pitched starters many times from dry yeast and always repitch slurry from both dry and liquid yeast. The interesting part - I prefer beers from repitched US05 than from a first pitch of dry yeast. It might be in my head (no side-by-side) but I perceive them as cleaner and clearer. I now mostly make a 'sacrificial' small batch with a packet of dry yeast, and use the slurry for my 'good' batches. Maybe you should try it before you comment that it'd bad practice.
I also have good success with Re pitched US05. Maybe it is specific to this specific yeast.
I prefer beers from repitched US05 than from a first pitch of dry yeast.
Brulosophy
Obviously your opinions on brulosophy are well known and probably why I went there....but it’s interesting, at least to me, that Marshall is a committed starter guy, but can’t manage to show the value.
I NEVER make a starter. There, I said it. Been brewing for 13 years. My beers taste good.
Due to truth in advertising laws, the reported cell counts for yeast packages (dry or liquid) are highly likely to be minimums, which may potentially grossly under-report the typical count of active/live yeast present.
Many of the things "most of us know" seem to shift over time and turns out we didn't really know them all that well at all. In this case I think it is possible that the quality of liquid yeast has changed over time and what we all knew to be true five years ago may not exactly apply today.
Obviously your opinions on brulosophy are well known and probably why I went there....but it’s interesting, at least to me, that Marshall is a committed starter guy, but can’t manage to show the value.
I think there's value that doesn't necessarily show up every time in flavors, in that it's insurance. You've probably seen me say this before, but I'll repeat it for others. My son is a microbiologist and also a home brewer. He says virtually all homebrews are "infected" in that there's dust and stuff floating in the air that ends up in our wort. Dust has bacteria on it, if we cough we expel droplets that contain bacteria, things like that.
If there's enough of those nasties in there, they can get a foothold and create off-flavors, and since bacteria reproduces far faster than yeast, it can happen fast.
A starter, by virtue of getting more yeast cells in the wort, and (in my case) taking off much faster than normal, allows the yeast the opportunity to outcompete any nasties that have fallen into the wort.
So--arguably there's value in doing a starter for that reason. Many brewers might argue that they don't have those off flavors even though they don't do a starter, but that doesn't mean they don't, at least occasionally. There isn't enough crap falling into our wort all the time to make a difference, time of year probably matters (bacteria-laden pollen, e.g.), it may not be bacteria that produces off-flavors of significance, and frankly, I'm skeptical of many brewers' ability to detect those off-flavors anyway. *see below for more on this
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I met Marshall at the BYO boot camp in Asheville. Three things stood out. 1) Nice guy, enjoyed the chance to visit with him the first night. 2) He looks younger in person than pics I've seen of him. 3) He had a glass of my Darth Lager, and when it was done, said "Let me have some more of that." Highlight of my trip.
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My skepticism of the Brulosophy approach is fairly well-known here, I think. They just don't control the tasting panels adequately for me to have confidence in the results. There's no control over what people are drinking prior to doing the tasting, and if they're burning their taste buds with IPAs before testing, or eating spicy or aromatic foods (garlic!), is it that they can't detect a difference, or that there's no difference? They also don't do the triangle test correctly--the orders in which people are exposed to the beers is supposed to be randomized, to eliminate ordering effects.
I did an experiment like this, and it's hard to do it. Participants don't care as much, there's all this stuff to keep organized, it's hard to get people to do the test before they start destroying their palate with all the various and sundry homebrews brought for trying....so it's not like I'm saying it's easy to do this all according to Hoyle. It's not.
That said, at least they're trying something. "Man in the arena" kind of thing. I think the control they bring to the two-batch approach is actually quite good. I'm a scientist, they really do a nice job trying to isolate the experimental variable each time.
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* I'm pretty skeptical of a single anecdotal claim of something regarding taste or off-flavors. There's lots of evidence that people have different palates, that some flavors (off-flavor or otherwise) are not perceptible to some people, and so on. All you need to do is see the results of judging competitions; I've seen where people submit the exact same beer under two different entries; one wins or medals, the other is panned as bad. Same beer.
I've entered beer in local comps, only to be stunned with what won the competition. Off-flavor in the beer, either extract twang or something else, whereas mine did not have that. (yeah, sour grapes here ). A buddy and I were at one of these, where the beer being judged was an Amber. I've got a pretty good one. We were shocked at what won, as if I'd had a sample of it at a taproom, I'd have never ordered a full glass. Nor my buddy, either.
I've done an off-flavor workshop, and I've become better at identifying off-flavors, though often pinpointing the source for me can be difficult. None of the judges at these comps have, as far as I can tell, ever done that.
So--when people say they don't have an off-flavor in a beer, I take it with a grain of salt. Is it because, THIS TIME, it wasn't infected, but next time it might be? Or that they can't detect an off-flavor that others would? A single anecdotal account is only that. Now, this doesn't mean I think the person is lying, I don't. It's just that it's a one-off judgment.
What I will do is take such a claim as a working hypothesis, looking for evidence it's wrong (which is all you can do in science). I'll also gather evidence that supports it, and eventually, if it looks interesting, I might do it in my own beer. That's what I did with pitching the single pack of White Labs yeast, no starter. White said he'd do that, my son has done it several times with no apparent ill-effects, and I just did it producing an excellent beer.
You reading this can take that as anecdotal, because....that's what it is.
I think there's value that doesn't necessarily show up every time in flavors, in that it's insurance. You've probably seen me say this before, but I'll repeat it for others. My son is a microbiologist and also a home brewer. He says virtually all homebrews are "infected" in that there's dust and stuff floating in the air that ends up in our wort. Dust has bacteria on it, if we cough we expel droplets that contain bacteria, things like that.
If there's enough of those nasties in there, they can get a foothold and create off-flavors, and since bacteria reproduces far faster than yeast, it can happen fast.
A starter, by virtue of getting more yeast cells in the wort, and (in my case) taking off much faster than normal, allows the yeast the opportunity to outcompete any nasties that have fallen into the wort.
Sanitation is not that big of a concern, the real issue is with moisture exposure. Dry yeast is extremely hygroscopic and will absorb atmospheric moisture real fast, once its water content rises above a certain threshold it will start degrading pretty quickly. I belive it would be quite difficult to avoid excessive exposure without specialized equipment.
This is a really interesting discussion.
Nottingham is another dry yeast where people anecdotally report good results when re-pitching it. And people occasionally mentioned that they get better beer with the re-pitches.
Yes it is. Have you tried MoreBeer for inexpensive yeast?
Lots of (seemingly) smart and experienced brewers have chimed in with different info. I am making my way through Chris White's Yeast book. I am not sure I have a comprehensive yeast "strategy" but I try different things and stick with what works the best (direct pitching dried yeast, harvesting yeast slurry including S-04, direct pitching White Labs packs into 2.5 gal batches...direct pitch a WLP001 pack into a 5 gal pale ale when an unexpected slot to brew popped up).
Much of my brewing habits were formed back when dried yeast had significantly more contamination and you could not get liquid yeast with 100B to 200B cells. All the info and quality yeast available these days has changed (or at least made me question) a lot of my practices.
You don't really get much of a vacuum with those and then there is still the issue of exposure while handling it.Would a standard kitchen vacuum sealer work?
Would a standard kitchen vacuum sealer work?
Dry yeast is designed to be a single use product
This study shows that serially repitched wet and dried yeasts perform in a similar fashion and that repitched cultures exhibit more typical fermentation and flavor profiles than fresh slurries. In addition, the study demonstrates that the accumulation of genetic and phenotypic variants is not associated with serial repitching of dried yeast cultures. Consequently, it is proposed that ADY can be reused in a similar fashion to wet yeast without any adverse effects on fermentation performance, yeast quality, or flavor production.Can anyone answer this? I will continue to reuse dry yeast as I've had good results, but the whole one-and-done idea for dry yeast just doesn't make sense to me.
PM sent.Thanks. This is what I'm after. Do you by chance have the whole study?
Is it not true that for certain styles under-pitching brings out desirable flavors by intentionally stressing yeast?
And yet it is Lallemand that recommends to uderpitch their Munich yeast to increase the banana flavor:No, it's not true. Actually, the opposite. This is the explanation from Dr. Clayton Cone of Lallemand....you can read more in my BYO column..."
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