Pitch two pouches of liquid?

[StophJS]

My understanding is that your typical Wyeast or White Labs liquid yeast pouch contains about 100 billion yeast cells, whereas a, 11.5g dry pouch contains about 275 billion. I'v also read that the 275 is the approximate recommended amount for a 5 gallon batch. So my question is, are people typically pitching two pouches of liquid into a batch? This seems like an unnecessary expenditure when liquid yeast is already more expensive than dry, and dry works just fine.

 

[el_caro]

You should really pitch the liquid yeast into a starter to build up the cell count to what is needed.
That is just one advantage of dry yeast.

 

[StophJS]

You should really pitch the liquid yeast into a starter to build up the cell count to what is needed.
That is just one advantage of dry yeast.

Funny you should mention it, I was just reading about the starters. So it wouldn't usually be necessary to make a starter for dry, but probably still beneficial to rehydrate?

 

[el_caro]

So it wouldn't usually be necessary to make a starter for dry, but probably still beneficial to rehydrate?

Correct. It is not usual or generally recommended to make starters for dry yeast.

That is not to say it can not be done as I have done it quite successfully when I wanted to build up 2gms of left over Nottingham dry yeast after making some small cider batches. I now have heaps of washed Nottingham and some frozen samples and I never buy it any more.

You should still use something like Mr Malty calculator to determine how much yeast you need for what you are brewing. Under-pitching and over pitching of yeast can have negative impact on you beer.

 

[StophJS]

Thanks for the tip. I'll check that out.