BetterBeerThroughDrinking
Member
Admittedly, I am one of these people who have always under pitched my beers. It is not because I am lazy or dont desire a quality product. It is just that I have never had a problem with 2 or three smack packs for 20 gallons (ale) and at $7 or $8 a pack, there is most certainly financial reasoning. Never had an issue, great, bright, fully attenuated beer.
After researching the topic, I began to wonder how much I could improve my beer by using a pitching calculator, the correct pitching rate and doing it right. So begins my story and question.
I wanted brew 20 gallons of black lager. I have made the same recipe and used 4 smack packs of 2206 Bavarian with tremendous results in the past but thought to myself, what if I tried pitching with the 1,700,000,000 cells I needed to really pitch this properly. I began with a single smack pack and with nearly 10 lbs of DME and through three steps I finally achieved a yeast population that could tear through 3 lbs of DME at 1.040 in a day no problem. I was excited.
I brewed Sunday night, 1/12/2014. I pumped my wort into the fermenter at 49° F, right where I intended to ferment, closed up the lager house with the mason jar of decanted yeast and allowed everything to rest overnight at 49°. The following morning, I added the yeast and waited with great anticipation for that baby to blow off the tube. Here we are two days later, no airlock activity, no change to the gravity, krausen and a grave feeling that something has gone terribly wrong.
Where the heck did I mess up? The only thing I can think of is when removing the yeast from the carboy, I made a thin paste of One Step and carefully applied it to the top of the carboy and wiped it clean to ensure the transfer to the jar was sterile. Maybe this killed the little bastards? I stored the jar of yeast in the refrigerator, at the front to make sure nothing would freeze and decanted off everything I could for a couple of days. The yeast was the same temp as the wort, my gravity was only 1.050 and here I sit on the verge of buying a smack pack or two to see what I can salvage. I am not going to spend $150 on yeast for a potentially FUBAR batch. What do you guys think happened?
Dave
After researching the topic, I began to wonder how much I could improve my beer by using a pitching calculator, the correct pitching rate and doing it right. So begins my story and question.
I wanted brew 20 gallons of black lager. I have made the same recipe and used 4 smack packs of 2206 Bavarian with tremendous results in the past but thought to myself, what if I tried pitching with the 1,700,000,000 cells I needed to really pitch this properly. I began with a single smack pack and with nearly 10 lbs of DME and through three steps I finally achieved a yeast population that could tear through 3 lbs of DME at 1.040 in a day no problem. I was excited.
I brewed Sunday night, 1/12/2014. I pumped my wort into the fermenter at 49° F, right where I intended to ferment, closed up the lager house with the mason jar of decanted yeast and allowed everything to rest overnight at 49°. The following morning, I added the yeast and waited with great anticipation for that baby to blow off the tube. Here we are two days later, no airlock activity, no change to the gravity, krausen and a grave feeling that something has gone terribly wrong.
Where the heck did I mess up? The only thing I can think of is when removing the yeast from the carboy, I made a thin paste of One Step and carefully applied it to the top of the carboy and wiped it clean to ensure the transfer to the jar was sterile. Maybe this killed the little bastards? I stored the jar of yeast in the refrigerator, at the front to make sure nothing would freeze and decanted off everything I could for a couple of days. The yeast was the same temp as the wort, my gravity was only 1.050 and here I sit on the verge of buying a smack pack or two to see what I can salvage. I am not going to spend $150 on yeast for a potentially FUBAR batch. What do you guys think happened?
Dave
