To Much Yeast?

[MiddleEarthBrewing]

Hello All,

A friend of mine and I are going to be doing a small batch brew, between 1 and 2 gallons, and I am trying to determine how I can still use the liquid vials of Wyeast for this without over yeasting. The dry yeasts, while excellent, dont come in the same strains I am looking for and if our goal is to do a test of a recipe changing the yeast between brew volumes is likely to impact the final product.

Thanks in advance for the advice, you guys are fantastic!
~Dan

 

[AgingHopster]

Make a starter and then measure the volume of the started and do your appropriate math to derive at your perfect amount. I've heard of people brewing tiny batches like this but I can't quite understand why anyone would go through all the time and work to only have one night's worth of beer?

Try the yeast calculator online

 

[tjpfeister]

Might be easiest to pour the vial in a known volume of distilled/boiled-chilled/whatever water then shake it up so all the yeast is in suspension. Then pour this volume into an easily divisible set of smaller containers. (Say 1 quart into 4 half-pints) And cold crash it. Decant the liquid when it's time to use the yeast.

 

[cmybeer]

I personally like the 2nd route posted; seems easier. That said depending on what kind of yeast and what kind of beer it is I might not care about it. I'm not much of yeast expert yet (so correct me if I'm wrong) but if it is a really neutral yeast that gives off very little flavor to the finished product I might not mind over pitching. If it is critical to the style flavor and you want those yeast flavor compounds which come from the reproduction period (correct?) it might be more important to pitch the recommended level so that the yeast need to reproduce a bit to get you those flavors. At least that's what i was thinking...or am I way off base.

 

[osagedr]

Hello All,

A friend of mine and I are going to be doing a small batch brew, between 1 and 2 gallons, and I am trying to determine how I can still use the liquid vials of Wyeast for this without over yeasting. The dry yeasts, while excellent, dont come in the same strains I am looking for and if our goal is to do a test of a recipe changing the yeast between brew volumes is likely to impact the final product.

Thanks in advance for the advice, you guys are fantastic!
~Dan

Here's what you need to know:

(1) what is the expected OG of your beer? You need more yeast for a higher OG.

(2) how old is your vial of yeast? Viability declines after it is produced and within a few weeks you don't have anything like 100 billion cells left to pitch of the 100 billion that the vial started with.

(3) EXACTLY how much wort will you have?

Where I'm going with this is that there is a good chance you don't have an excess of yeast at all, and certainly not to the point where you have to worry about whether you are going to "waste" a huge amount. You might just pitch the entire vial depending on your answers to the three questions above.

For example, if you were making two gallons of a 1.060 ale today with yeast produced exactly two weeks ago (viability now 87%), you would need to pitch the entire vial to have the proper cell count.

Use the pitching rate calculator at www.mrmalty.com to figure out exactly what you need to pitch.

 

[dbhokie]

As said above Liquid cultures don't really come with a high cell count, and they are less viable as time goes on. If you take one liquid vial and split it into two, you may be great for your small volumes. You may even need to do like a 250-500ml starter for each. Just use a yeast pitching calculator. There are plenty good ones out there.

If you start with 67 million, and you want to split into two, I would try to suspend it very well, (DON'T SHAKE THE PISS OUT OF YOUR VIAL THOUGH, you will find that won't go well, just shake it gently) and divide it between two sanitized containers, then make two small separate starters (if necessary).