I am curious to know why "Dry Yeast" users, which I am one of them, is not applicable to making yeast starters? It sounds like an intelligent idea - still!
Watched Palmer talking about it the other night, from what I took - dry yeasts come with their own nutrient reserves, liquid yeasts have already consumed these.
So this is my question: Am I right in assuming there's no need to make a starter with this freshly harvested yeast since it's already up to speed and ready to go? i.e. it hasn't been dormant/refrigerated and has only been harvested that day?
… but then why don't the manufacturers simply make a dry version?
Would be nice but is easier said than done. The freeze-drying process (ETA I believe it's freeze drying which is used here) isn't easy on many cells (I'm familiar through work-related experiences) and a reasonable fraction of the cells from the liquid yeast varieties may not be able to survive. Liquid yeast manufacturers are supplying strains which fit a customer demand and not selecting strains based on their ability to reliably survive the drying process.
I have done very few starters, typically choosing to re pitch fresh slurry out of the fermenter, rather than make starters. I do starters mainly to harvest yeast from bottle conditioned beer. Another option to consider is making a small 2 gallon batch with one tube of yeast, then collecting slurry from that batch for a lager batch. Why make a starter when you can make a lesser quantity of beer for not much additional work....yea I'm lazy, but draw the line at underpitching and avoid doing so if at all possible.
My question is, how would I go about figuring out how much yeast I have? I plan to brew either tomorrow or friday and I'd like to figure out how much yeast to pitch instead of pitching the entire thing.
I made my first starter about 3 weeks ago. This past weekend, I made another of WYEAST 1010 yeast. I didn't realize it was nearly 6 months old until a few hours after I had smacked it and noticed it didn't inflate much. I made a starter anyways. I made a 1L starter (100g DME/1L water) and had it on the stirplate right at 12am. After about 18 hours, I wasn't feeling confident about the yeast propagating due to yeast starter calculators giving me a 0% viability, so I made another 1L starter and tossed it in. The next day, I cold crashed, and this is how much yeast I ended up with.
A whole lot more than I was expecting...
The layer is about a quarter of an inch thick, covering the entire bottom of my 2L flask. So 1/4" all around.
My question is, how would I go about figuring out how much yeast I have? I plan to brew either tomorrow or friday and I'd like to figure out how much yeast to pitch instead of pitching the entire thing.
I made my first starter about 3 weeks ago. This past weekend, I made another of WYEAST 1010 yeast. I didn't realize it was nearly 6 months old until a few hours after I had smacked it and noticed it didn't inflate much. I made a starter anyways. I made a 1L starter (100g DME/1L water) and had it on the stirplate right at 12am. After about 18 hours, I wasn't feeling confident about the yeast propagating due to yeast starter calculators giving me a 0% viability, so I made another 1L starter and tossed it in. The next day, I cold crashed, and this is how much yeast I ended up with.
A whole lot more than I was expecting...
The layer is about a quarter of an inch thick, covering the entire bottom of my 2L flask. So 1/4" all around.
My question is, how would I go about figuring out how much yeast I have? I plan to brew either tomorrow or friday and I'd like to figure out how much yeast to pitch instead of pitching the entire thing.
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