First time on Liquid yeast

[Sadu]

Hi all,

I'm up to brew 7 in 9 days time will be using 1450 Denny's Fave liquid yeast. Batch is an all-grain brown porter 40L / 10G and I was planning on using a step-up starter but my homemade stirplate project has run into technical issues and won't be ready in time. This is my first time using liquid yeast and first time on a bigger batch.

I don't feel confident about ramping up a 100b yeast pack to 370b without a stir plate on my first time, plus the cost of DME for big non-stirplate starters is getting up there.

So I thought I'd instead get a Coopers dark ale kit from the supermarket, throw away the yeast, pitch the Denny's 1450 with no starter into an 11 litres / 3G batch (so basically toucanning the kit). Then in 9-10 days time I rack the dark ale to secondary and there should be a big fat 1450 yeast cake for me to recycle on the big batch without the drama of making starters.

I figure instead of spending that money on heaps of DME then chucking it away, this way I get a half batch of beer out of it, it's way less work, way less risk, and plenty of yeast to use on the big 40L / 10G batch.

Yeast calculator says a half-batch of 1.042 dark ale needs about 87b cells, which seems about perfect for pitching the liquid yeast pack straight in?

Does this seem like a reasonable approach?

 

[giraffe]

Yep, that will work just fine, i generally do that for big beers, I brew 5 gallons of 1.040 beer first and then harvest a section of the yeast cake for the big beer 2 weeks later.

Theoretically it should have 100billion cells in the pack when its new. As long as the pack isnt real old youll be fine.

 

[Sadu]

So the yeast just turned up on the courier and I'm just warming it up getting ready to pitch. I checked the date, 12 Jan 2016.

The brewer's friend calculator says this...

"Yeast is 142 days old, the viability is estimated at 1%."

I'm thinking WTF. It seems to be puffing up, but this isn't what I had in mind for my first go at liquid yeast. I'm not sure if that 1% is accurate, I was hoping for more like 70-80%.

Not sure what to do now.

Do I pitch anyway and have a whinge to the supplier if it doesn't take off?

Or build up a bit of a starter and pitch in a couple of days? Problem with this is that the wort is all ready to go in the fermenter, could be unsanitary leaving it there too long with no yeast.

Or split the batch in half again and pitch the old Wyeast pack to a smaller 6 litre / 1.5 G batch? Maybe freeze the leftover wort for starters later.

Any suggestions? We don't have a LHBS where I live so I gotta work with what I got.

EDIT: Beersmith is saying 30% viability, which is better.

 

[flars]

This calculator says you have 34% viability.
http://www.brewunited.com/yeast_calculator.php
I feel the viability estimates with this calculator are more realistic than other calculators. Try out the calculator for the amount of DME required for a shake and swirl starter.

 

[Sadu]

Thanks for the replies. I made a 500ml starter, going to drink some homebrew, relax, not worry, and shake the starter intermittantly for a couple of hours then pitch before going to bed.

 

[Sadu]

Just updating for anyone reading.

I made a 500ml starter, shaking / swirling every 10 mins to oxygenate for maybe 3-4 hours then pitched that to my 3G batch. Lag time was 24 hours before I noticed any krausen activity but it seems to be fermenting away happily now. The 1450 smells yummm - it's a lovely sweet smell compared to the dry yeast I'm used to.

Biggest problem now is controlling the temperature - my temp controller is in use on another batch and I'm finding that the smaller 3G batch heats up / cools down so much quicker than a 6G batch.

Question on that - temperatures have been all over the place (aiming for 18c, actual has been between 15c and 23c). I understand that this might affect the flavours of the current batch, I can live with that. Is this going to cause off flavours in the future batch when the yeast is harvested? In other words, does the yeast get tainted by bad temperature control or is it a clean slate for the next batch?

 

[flars]

Your yeast will be good to harvest and reuse. The temperature fluctuations won't change the characteristics of the yeast.

A swamp cooler may work better to control this beers fermentation temperature if there is no room along side the six gallon fermentor.

 

[Sadu]

Another update on this.

The half-batch has been brewing for 9 days and brew-day for the big batch came around. I was hoping to rack the small batch to secondary and find a nice fat yeast cake waiting for me.

Checked the SG on the small batch - 1.023, down from 1.042 after 9 days - I'm pretty unimpressed about this.
Racked it to secondary and found a tiny yeast cake there - maybe a pint / 500ml total. Since it was a hopped extract brew that is probably mostly yeast rather than protiens or hop crud. According to mrmalty that *should* be enough for a 10G batch but it's cutting it a lot finer than I wanted.

While we boiled I made a little 500ml starter for it and left it on the stirplate (maybe 2 hours total). Then pitched into the 10 gallon porter.

24 hours later no fermentation activity so far. I'm expecting it to be a sluggish start, which I gotta say is pretty annoying given how expensive this yeast is.

Am I right to be annoyed about buying full-price yeast with 34% viability, which can't even properly ferment a half size low gravity extract batch?

Not looking good on the 2.5 gallons of dark ale sitting at 1.023 in secondary though. I'll give that another week then evaluate the options. I have some PET bottles I could bottle it in to reduce the risk of bottle bombs, otherwise I have some US-05 slurry I could make into a starter and try to finish the job.