Pliny The Elder Yeast Amount

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jpr.edison

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Hi I plan on brewing a 5 gallon, all grain, Pliny the Elder kit tomorrow. I will be using Safale US-05 yeast. My question is...should I use one pack or two? Asking because I am unsure if 2 would be overkill and I don't know if that would cause problems.
Thanks
Jim
 
Just be sure rehydrate. It's fairly common practice to just sprinkle dry yeast onto wort, but you're killing up to 50% of the yeast cells doing it that way. Not only are you starting with half the amount of cells you intended, but the dead cells break down and affect the beer flavor.
 
Just be sure rehydrate. It's fairly common practice to just sprinkle dry yeast onto wort, but you're killing up to 50% of the yeast cells doing it that way. Not only are you starting with half the amount of cells you intended, but the dead cells break down and affect the beer flavor.
Thank you
 
Just be sure rehydrate. It's fairly common practice to just sprinkle dry yeast onto wort, but you're killing up to 50% of the yeast cells doing it that way. Not only are you starting with half the amount of cells you intended, but the dead cells break down and affect the beer flavor.

You sure?

At least Lallemand has done studies showing virtually no difference in viability, attenuation, and finished beer profile when dehydrated versus not.
 
From the Fermentis website-
B9856A6E-F889-4109-A75F-7C705D99A34A.png

That info would seem to give the brewer a choice, with neither method preferred. However, as we see on a daily basis, belief dies hard, even when knowledge is kicking it’s ass. :cool:
 
i I plan on brewing a 5 gallon, all grain, Pliny the Elder kit tomorrow. I will be using Safale US-05 yeast. My question is...should I use one pack or two? Asking because I am unsure if 2 would be overkill and I don't know if that would cause problems.
Thanks
That’s a big beer. 2 packs.
 
Chris White is Founder, President and CEO of a company that sells liquid yeast. He is often very negative about dry yeast, so I generally ignore anything he says about dry yeast.
Yeast cells are yeast cells regardless of the medium they are stored in. He literally asks the question, "Why wouldn't you rehydrate?" It's a simple step in getting the yeast cells happy. Kill half the yeast and have them potentially add off flavors to the beer? No thanks.

"During the first moments of rehydration, the cell cannot regulate what passes through the membrane. High levels of sugars, nutrients, hop acids, and other compounds can enter freely and damage the cells. This is why adding dry yeast directly to wort results in such a high percentage of dead and damaged cells."

Trust me, I'm not claiming to know everything there is to know about yeast and the fermentation process, but I'd sure rather start with the best possible yeast culture I can.
 
Yeast cells are yeast cells regardless of the medium they are stored in. He literally asks the question, "Why wouldn't you rehydrate?" It's a simple step in getting the yeast cells happy. Kill half the yeast and have them potentially add off flavors to the beer? No thanks.

"During the first moments of rehydration, the cell cannot regulate what passes through the membrane. High levels of sugars, nutrients, hop acids, and other compounds can enter freely and damage the cells. This is why adding dry yeast directly to wort results in such a high percentage of dead and damaged cells."

Trust me, I'm not claiming to know everything there is to know about yeast and the fermentation process, but I'd sure rather start with the best possible yeast culture I can.
Multiple Experiments showed that this 50% dying thing is a myth. They are linked to somewhere here in the forum.

I would use two packs in this case. Doesn't cost much and it's much easier to underpitch than overpitch.
 
Trust me, I'm not claiming to know everything there is to know about yeast and the fermentation process, but I'd sure rather start with the best possible yeast culture I can.

Chris White is a great resource but he constantly throws out negative jabs about dry yeast and he plays down the importance of competitor products that include twice the amount of yeast as his company does. He has said many times that direct pitching 1 pack of White Labs yeast into a 5-gallon batch is fine, but I don't think that is good advice. I would not trust the CEO of GM to give me accurate information about Honda's vehicles.
 
Hi I plan on brewing a 5 gallon, all grain, Pliny the Elder kit tomorrow. I will be using Safale US-05 yeast. My question is...should I use one pack or two? Asking because I am unsure if 2 would be overkill and I don't know if that would cause problems.

What is your gravity? Another option for a beer in the 1.075-ish range is to pitch 1 and a half packs. Dry yeast stores well, so you could just seal up the half pack and save it for later. But pitching 2 packs would be a better option than just 1 pack and it should not cause any negative issues.
 
Multiple Experiments showed that this 50% dying thing is a myth. They are linked to somewhere here in the forum.

I would use two packs in this case. Doesn't cost much and it's much easier to underpitch than overpitch.

It's still optimal to rehydrate. A quick Google search still shows 30-50% dry yeast death upon direct pitch. Why risk it?

Chris White is a great resource but he constantly throws out negative jabs about dry yeast and he plays down the importance of competitor products that include twice the amount of yeast as his company does. He has said many times that direct pitching 1 pack of White Labs yeast into a 5-gallon batch is fine, but I don't think that is good advice. I would not trust the CEO of GM to give me accurate information about Honda's vehicles.
I hear what you're saying. You can get away with a direct pitch in low gravity beer <1.048, but it's still not ideal. WL recommends 2 packs for anything mid-range. They also mention making a starter is still the best thing you can do for your beer, as long as you're sanitary.

I think we as homebrewers are always trying to find a shortcut in our process. I'm just trying to make the best beer possible. I didn't realize how important yeast actually is. Dumb of me, I know, but the best beer starts with the best possible yeast.
 
I've pitched Notty and US-05 dry for years and in brews north of 1.050 and have never had a problem but hey if rehydrating makes you feel better about your brew then have at it.

Same. In fact I used to rehydrate religiously because that's what I was told was best. Since I have started pitching it dry, there has been no difference in attenuation or beer quality.
 
Hi I plan on brewing a 5 gallon, all grain, Pliny the Elder kit tomorrow. I will be using Safale US-05 yeast. My question is...should I use one pack or two? Asking because I am unsure if 2 would be overkill and I don't know if that would cause problems.
Thanks
Jim

Why not use a pitch rate calculator, so you know your pitch rate is where you want it?

https://www.brewersfriend.com/yeast-pitch-rate-and-starter-calculator/
By my estimate, for an 8% PTE clone, 2 packs is still a slight underpitch for 0.75 million cells/ml/Plato pitch rate . So you'll definitely want to use both packs.
 
It's still optimal to rehydrate. A quick Google search still shows 30-50% dry yeast death upon direct pitch. Why risk it?


I hear what you're saying. You can get away with a direct pitch in low gravity beer <1.048, but it's still not ideal. WL recommends 2 packs for anything mid-range. They also mention making a starter is still the best thing you can do for your beer, as long as you're sanitary.

I think we as homebrewers are always trying to find a shortcut in our process. I'm just trying to make the best beer possible. I didn't realize how important yeast actually is. Dumb of me, I know, but the best beer starts with the best possible yeast.
I agree with your "why risk it" approach 100 %, but from the opposite direction. Why risk the extra step if it is not necessary? Thinking about contamination, especially. I mean, I am talking about "normal" beer strength here. I guess with this higher gravity wort, it really is debatable, I would not say "do not do it" in this particular case. When the gravity gets even higher, i´d probably also do it. I do this in my meads for this and other reasons.

I know that there are many articles that claim this 50% dying thing, but this mainly goes back to people writing what they read somewhere else and at the end you find no tests to really validate this claim. On the other hand, I read about tests that people did themselves (normal gravity worts around 1.05 OG), and they could not find this yeast homicide that these articles talk about.

I for myself, never could find any different yeast behaviour or endproduct between batches that were rehydrated and those at which the yeast was just thrown into the wort. I know about many other people who experienced the same.

Long storry short, strong worts, rehydrate if you want to, normal or low og worts, don´t risk the extra step.
 
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I think it's fascinating how yeast manufacturers (both dry and liquid) are happy to let people believe that there are a lot more cells in the packages than they are willing to put in writing.

Fermentis promises a minimum of 10 billion viable cells per gram, in writing on their spec sheet for US05.
 
Fermentis promises a minimum of 10 billion viable cells per gram, in writing on their spec sheet for US05.

Which comes out to 115B cells per 11.5 gram pack. Yet "everyone" thinks there are 200B+ cells per pack. And the thing that most brewers actually read, the pack itself, says nothing.
 
Which comes out to 115B cells per 11.5 gram pack.

Right.

BTW, the default in the Brewer's Friend pitch rate calculator is 11 grams @ 10B cells per gram. So all one needs to do is use the defaults to be in line with Fermentis's published numbers. I can't imagine anything easier. Almost no thinking required to get a reasonably accurate pitch rate.
 
Yet "everyone" thinks there are 200B+ cells per pack.

200B is what everyone thinks they're getting out of their liquid yeast packs, but the half life of liquid yeast cells is on the order of 90 days, IIRC. It's a bit harder to get a reasonably accurate pitch rate with liquid yeast. I'm guessing 99% of brewers don't even look at the date on their packs, let alone adjust for it in a pitch rate calculation. But I digress.
 
200B is what everyone thinks they're getting out of their liquid yeast packs, but the half life of liquid yeast cells is on the order of 90 days, IIRC.

Wyeast and White Labs always advertised 100B, not 200B. I don't think anyone thinks there are 200B for those, though I've seen people think they're getting 125B with Wyeast, based on something a Wyeast lab tech said verbally, but of course not in writing. Imperial Yeast, a relative newcomer, does claim 200B cells in their packs.

200B is what most people think are in dry packs. I've literally read it hundreds of times on the forums. But good on Brewer's Friend if it defaults to something closer to reality.
 
200B is what most people think are in dry packs. I've literally read it hundreds of times on the forums. But good on Brewer's Friend if it defaults to something closer to reality.

Yeah, I always had it in my head that 1 pack of dry yeast was roughly the same as 1 pack of Imperial (I think Omega has over 200B cells these days too) and that both were roughly 2 packs of White Labs and Wyeast.

I wonder if the 115B cells in a pack of US-05 is roughly the same as making a 1L vitality starter with a 100B cell pack of White Labs or Wyeast yeast (night before brew day, no stir plate). I would be interested to learn more about the details of liquid yeast vs dry yeast production, but my vague understanding is that dry yeast is dried in a state where it has more cell reserves (the source of the advice that oxygenation is less important with dry yeast). It could also be that a pack of US-05 that is several months old might still have 105B cells, where that liquid yeast pack is down to 65B cells.

For the most part, I have had good luck pitching a pack of Fermentis yeast into a 5-gallon batch up to around 1.065 without issues. I did have some sluggish results recently with a pack of Cellar Science Cali Ale pitched into a 1.067 wort...but I also had the same sluggish fermentation pitching an entire pack into a 2.5 gallon batch of a 1.068 wort (still in the fermenter).
 
I agree with your "why risk it" approach 100 %, but from the opposite direction. Why risk the extra step if it is not necessary? Thinking about contamination, especially. I mean, I am talking about "normal" beer strength here. I guess with this higher gravity wort, it really is debatable, I would not say "do not do it" in this particular case. When the gravity gets even higher, i´d probably also do it. I do this in my meads for this and other reasons.

I know that there are many articles that claim this 50% dying thing, but this mainly goes back to people writing what they read somewhere else and at the end you find no tests to really validate this claim. On the other hand, I read about tests that people did themselves (normal gravity worts around 1.05 OG), and they could not find this yeast homicide that these articles talk about.

I for myself, never could find any different yeast behaviour or endproduct between batches that were rehydrated and those at which the yeast was just thrown into the wort. I know about many other people who experienced the same.

Long storry short, strong worts, rehydrate if you want to, normal or low og worts, don´t risk the extra step.
I guess I would come back and say why not rehydrate all time then, especially if you're paying attention to sanitization? If you do it for a higher gravity wort, why not do it for a lower gravity wort? I know you say you can't tell a difference in the final beer, but that's not to say there isn't something happening, or not happening, on the microscopic level. I get why people don't rehydrate. I don't boil my starters for 15 minutes, like the literature says. Does it affect the final outcome? I have no clue. My beer tastes good to me!

This is all coming from me having just read the Yeast book for the first time. I trust the science. Especially coming from 2 experts in the field. Funny thing is, I never even use dry yeast. I just didn't want to steer someone in the wrong direction, even if I'm not 100% sure I know the right direction. I just figured an expert in the field would have better insight than the average Joe.
 
I guess I would come back and say why not rehydrate all time then, especially if you're paying attention to sanitization? If you do it for a higher gravity wort, why not do it for a lower gravity wort? I know you say you can't tell a difference in the final beer, but that's not to say there isn't something happening, or not happening, on the microscopic level. I get why people don't rehydrate. I don't boil my starters for 15 minutes, like the literature says. Does it affect the final outcome? I have no clue. My beer tastes good to me!

This is all coming from me having just read the Yeast book for the first time. I trust the science. Especially coming from 2 experts in the field. Funny thing is, I never even use dry yeast. I just didn't want to steer someone in the wrong direction, even if I'm not 100% sure I know the right direction. I just figured an expert in the field would have better insight than the average Joe.
Science seems to be the new religion. Everybody can write something in a certain way, claim it's science and then it must be true. I trust other people who looked at it at the microscopic level and they could not find this yeast homicide when pitching directly. It got a bit worse when the wort had a higher gravity, that's why I said I would probably do it with higher og worts. Are these guys less scientific? I don't know, at least it matches my personal experience so I tend to believe them.
 
Everybody can write something in a certain way, claim it's science and then it must be true.

On the face of it, that would seem to be true for both sides of the argument. The only difference (in the absence of evidence) would be that one claim is more widely accepted, while the newer "extraordinary" claim requires extraordinary evidence.

I trust other people who looked at it at the microscopic level and they could not find this yeast homicide when pitching directly. It got a bit worse when the wort had a higher gravity, that's why I said I would probably do it with higher og worts. Are these guys less scientific?

Perhaps you could post a link to the paper(s) you're referring to.

I don't know, at least it matches my personal experience so I tend to believe them.

Beware confirmation bias. There's a difference between replicating an experiment (where someone runs the same experiment and get the same results) and believing a claim because it's thought to be consistent with someone's subjective experience ("beer tastes good" or whatever). The latter is confirmation bias and isn't valid logic. It's also very hard to avoid.

I'm not saying that either of the claims in this thread are right or wrong, but a good starting point would be a review of these experiments.
 
On the face of it, that would seem to be true for both sides of the argument. The only difference (in the absence of evidence) would be that one claim is more widely accepted, while the newer "extraordinary" claim requires extraordinary evidence.



Perhaps you could post a link to the paper(s) you're referring to.



Beware confirmation bias. There's a difference between replicating an experiment (where someone runs the same experiment and get the same results) and believing a claim because it's thought to be consistent with someone's subjective experience ("beer tastes good" or whatever). The latter is confirmation bias and isn't valid logic. It's also very hard to avoid.

I'm not saying that either of the claims in this thread are right or wrong, but a good starting point would be a review of these experiments.
Yes, exactly. Review of the expperiments ist key. They are somewhere here in the forum, I have no idea where. I read it, validated it for myself and went on, I have no idea how to find them again without spending lots of time on it, sorry.
 
Hi I plan on brewing a 5 gallon, all grain, Pliny the Elder kit tomorrow. I will be using Safale US-05 yeast. My question is...should I use one pack or two? Asking because I am unsure if 2 would be overkill and I don't know if that would cause problems.
Thanks
Jim
I brew this often and it always turns-out great. I always oxygenate 2 minutes at .5 ppm, sprinkle in 2 packages of US-05, and seem to have very happy and robust yeast in about 12 hours. OG is usually 1.076, with FG 1.010.
 
Lot of good information in this webinar from Fermentis.


Wow! Can't argue with a scientific academic study. No need to to rehydrate or oxygenate when using dry yeast, just sprinkle it on top of wort. I admit, I skipped ahead quite a bit, but no mention of using a starter. I wonder what their research says about that?
 
Wow! Can't argue with a scientific academic study. No need to to rehydrate or oxygenate when using dry yeast, just sprinkle it on top of wort. I admit, I skipped ahead quite a bit, but no mention of using a starter. I wonder what their research says about that?


here is another one. The science is impressive and I think provides some thought provoking results.

 
Note this screen capture from the webinar. The trials by Fermentis on 3 different yeast strains showed that yeast viability was consistently lower when rehydrated in water vs in wort, and also that higher gravity wort did not reduce viability (in most cases it helped a little). Wow! I would be curious how this applies to other yeast manufacturers' strains.

Dry Yeast Info.PNG
 
Note this screen capture from the webinar. The trials by Fermentis on 3 different yeast strains showed that yeast viability was consistently lower when rehydrated in water vs in wort, and also that higher gravity wort did not reduce viability (in most cases it helped a little). Wow! I would be curious how this applies to other yeast manufacturers' strains.

And the words that go along with that slide is pretty close to "the direct pitch in your wort is actually beneficial for your yeast health"
When you combine these results with the agitation (none, moderate, vigorous) during rehydration data presented earlier in the talk I'm convinced the best way to pitch US-05 is direct sprinkle onto the wort.

As you say would be interesting to see same experiments from other dry yeast manufacturers. Lallemand states opposite position when it comes to rehydration of their dry yeast (rehydration following a fairly complex protocol being preferred) but I've not seen data to justify.
 
I just created this beast of a beer and this was what my numbers were:

OG = 1.074 (mine 1.070 )
FG = 1.014 ( mine1.010 )
ABV = 8.3% (mine 7.88%)

Yeast:
Wyeast 1056 (American Ale) (no pre)

Did I get close? I'd say yes. How could it have reached full attention? Starter? Maybe that would have put it where it needed to be. But I felt fortunate to get this far as this was only my second BIAB adventure and this was a very intense brew day.
 
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