too much yeast?

[edsrockin]

is there such a thing? i just brewed up a Left Hand Milk Stout clone (extract w/grains) kit through Austin Homebrew. It suggested two vials of White Labs Calif. Ale yeast, so that is what i used.

grain ingredients were: ¾ # Munich Malt ¾ # Black Roasted Barley ¾ # Pale Ale Malt ¾ # Chocolate Malt (+ ½ #) ¾ # Crystal 60L Malt
10 oz. Flaked Barley ½ # Flaked Oats



so back to my question: two vials of yeast? is that too much? i realize there is a good amount of grain in this batch, but just never pitched that much yeast for a 5 gallon batch.

i have used this yeast before and have been impressed with how fast it takes off and vigorously it ferments. this time, not so much. it started within 12 hours, but isn't really actively fermenting (about 3 seconds to a bubble cycle), and it may be stuck now as it doesn't seem to have any airlock activity at all.

there is a nice 1/2" thick layer of krausen sitting on the wort, but it just doesn't seem to be taking off. it has been kept between 75 and 80 which has worked out with previous batches.

also this was my first full boil. i just read on another thread that a full boil tends to "de-oxygenate" the water whereas a partial boil helps aerate as the water added to bring up to 5 gallons is more oxygenated.

so i am assuming i didn't aerate it enough? i have shaken it a few times since the intial shake and it will bubble slowly for a little bit and quits. any ideas what i should do different or just keep doing it?

sorry for the long-winded post, just wanted to include any details i could think of. thanks all.

 

[El_Exorcisto]

Stop worrying about bubbles. If it hasn't been a month in primary, then wait until it has been. Make starters, don't pitch yeast into wort.

 

[wildwest450]

Stop worrying about bubbles. If it hasn't been a month in primary, then wait until it has been. Make starters, don't pitch yeast into wort.

Why in the world would you leave it in the primary a month?


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[emjay]

Why in the world would you leave it in the primary a month?


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Because he's patient and appreciates good beer and the process by which it's made?
(hint: it can be pretty safely assumed he's foregoing the use of a secondary.)

 

[flabyboy]

Stop worrying about bubbles. If it hasn't been a month in primary, then wait until it has been. Make starters, don't pitch yeast into wort.

You really don't need a starter to pitch in a lower gravity beer. I believe 1.060 OG or higher is the recommended point to use starters. I just did 2 batches at 1.050 OG and pitched one wyeast smack pack each. I had very quick and healthy fermentations.

Of course its nice to know if your yeast is viable or not, but it does add cost and additional preparation to your brew day

 

[El_Exorcisto]

Wildwest, because leaving it on the yeast lets the yeast do it's job better? And flabyboy, if you are having great results without making starters, then way to go. It's really difficult to not make beer. However, to do it right, one should really be making starters to get the viable cell count up, since most of the yeast you buy has a disturbingly high percentage of non-viable cells.

 

[edsrockin]

And flabyboy, if you are having great results without making starters, then way to go. It's really difficult to not make beer. However, to do it right, one should really be making starters to get the viable cell count up, since most of the yeast you buy has a disturbingly high percentage of non-viable cells.

okay, out of curiosity and to learn (not to be argumentative) -- with a liquid yeast, it's my understanding you just shake and pitch it once it's brought up to room temp. is that wrong?

yes so far it has been working, but this is only my fourth batch and still playing with kits and learning. i always use liquid yeast though as my buddy told me it's typically much more viable than dry so long as it's kept refrigerated.


thanks for the replies.

 

[wildwest450]

Wildwest, because leaving it on the yeast lets the yeast do it's job better?

If you aerate properly (liquid yeast) and pitch proper amounts, it's absolutely unnecessary to leave MOST beers in the primary for a month, that's just lazy brewing, imo. There are many styles that can be at their prime in a short period of time. I'm enjoying an APA right now that was brewed on January 7th. It's fantastic. In the primary just under two weeks and was fully attenuated.

To rule of thumb something like primary time, is silly, imo.

 

[McGarnigle]

Just to clarify, if you're worried about stuck fermentation, then don't wait a full month to see if you hit your FG. But you do seem to be panicking a bit. If you have a nice Krausen and had bubbles, something was happening. There's absolutely no concern here that you pitched too much yeast.

If nothing else, making a starter will save you money on yeast. Also, your buddy telling you liquid is more viable than dry is wrong. Dry has more cells per package.

 

[McGarnigle]

If you aerate properly (liquid yeast) and pitch proper amounts, it's absolutely unnecessary to leave MOST beers in the primary for a month, that's just lazy brewing, imo. I'm enjoying an IPA right now that was brewed on January 7th. It's fantastic. In the primary just under two weeks and was fully attenuated.

I'm with you on this. This is mostly blowback from the primary vs. secondary argument. It's better to leave in primary for 4 weeks than to leave in primary for 2 then secondary for 2 more. Don't fear autolysis. Somehow this has been taken as the longer the primary, the better.

It actually seems like some of the anti-secondary movement is based on the finding that yeast isn't doing anything but falling out in secondary anyway. But that doesn't help the long primary argument.

 

[El_Exorcisto]

edsrockin, dry yeast actually tends to have much higher viable cell counts than liquid yeast. Shaking and dumping liquid yeast into your fermenter is rolling the dice on viable cell count. By making a starter, you increase the viable cell count to whatever that size starter can accommodate. By doing that yo will have much better consistency, and make sure whatever yeast you are using is going to behave just how intended. The only time I skip making a starter is when harvesting out of a primary just after bottling, since it's basically just using it from a five gallon starter anyway.

 

[flabyboy]

If you aerate properly (liquid yeast) and pitch proper amounts, it's absolutely unnecessary to leave MOST beers in the primary for a month, that's just lazy brewing, imo. There are many styles that can be at their prime in a short period of time. I'm enjoying an APA right now that was brewed on January 7th. It's fantastic. In the primary just under two weeks and was fully attenuated.

To rule of thumb something like primary time, is silly, imo.

you just called a lot of well respected homebrewers on this site lazy, since this is the method they are preaching

 

[flabyboy]

Wildwest, because leaving it on the yeast lets the yeast do it's job better? And flabyboy, if you are having great results without making starters, then way to go. It's really difficult to not make beer. However, to do it right, one should really be making starters to get the viable cell count up, since most of the yeast you buy has a disturbingly high percentage of non-viable cells.

this may be true with White Labs vials, which I believe only has half the active cells as a Wyeast smack pack. Never used the white labs vials. Only used Wyeast and dry yeast at this point.

 

[emjay]

I'm with you on this. This is mostly blowback from the primary vs. secondary argument. It's better to leave in primary for 4 weeks than to leave in primary for 2 then secondary for 2 more. Don't fear autolysis. Somehow this has been taken as the longer the primary, the better.

It actually seems like some of the anti-secondary movement is based on the finding that yeast isn't doing anything but falling out in secondary anyway. But that doesn't help the long primary argument.

Well you pretty much implied in your post right there that clarity is going to be an issue
But in case you don't care about appearance, we also know that yeast do more for the flavor profile than simply converting sugars to alcohol. Just because the beer is fully attenuated doesn't mean the yeast is finished working on your beer. In fact, the particular strains on the market today have been selected largely for these effects on flavor and that they clean up specific intermediates to achieve a desirable profile... any strain within the species can create alcohol and yet finding good ones is still quite a challenge.

You may not be able to detect some of these intermediates in the form of off-flavors but many people can. Go try the BJCP doctored beer kit and then tell everyone that beer doesn't benefit from anything past two weeks on the cake. On second thought, don't. I'd love to go back to easily enjoying half-assed beers, but I can't.

 

[wildwest450]

you just called a lot of well respected homebrewers on this site lazy, since this is the method they are preaching

Damn straight, just because some say it's so, doesn't make it so. If you've been here as long as I have, you'll realize a couple of things. 4 years ago it was two weeks minimum, now it's a month. Common sense will tell any intelligent brewer that's nonsense. This isn't an exact science, set in stone timelines are fools gold. Word.

And well respected by whose definition?


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[flabyboy]

I think most people on here respect and appreciate Revvy's advice. thats who jumped to my mind. to each their own. I would rather be patient with my brew than rush it out. if that makes me a lazy brewer...

 

[wildwest450]

I think most people on here respect and appreciate Revvy's advice. thats who jumped to my mind. to each their own. I would rather be patient with my brew than rush it out. if that makes me a lazy brewer...

I was not implicating any names, just know that's faulty reasoning. Seriously, are you going to brew a hefeweizen, a mild , an IPA or APA and ferment for a month? Sorry if you think that's an acceptable technique, it's not.

 

[McGarnigle]

Well you pretty much implied in your post right there that clarity is going to be an issue
But in case you don't care about appearance, we also know that yeast do more for the flavor profile than simply converting sugars to alcohol. Just because the beer is fully attenuated doesn't mean the yeast is finished working on your beer. In fact, the particular strains on the market today have been selected largely for these effects on flavor and that they clean up specific intermediates to achieve a desirable profile... any strain within the species can create alcohol and yet finding good ones is still quite a challenge.

But are they still cleaning up at 4 weeks?

White Labs site says:

Most fermentations will be complete within 14 days. Lager fermentations can take up to one month, plus aging time. The typical ale profile is to ferment very actively for 1-4 days, which is called the "exponential" or "log" phase. Then the yeast enter a stationary phase, which helps to mature the beer and can last from 3-10 days. The beer should be ready to bottle at this time

So their 14 day estimate assumes the yeast has done more than ferment. Also, the famous John Palmer quota that's bandied about here says this:

Even lagers do not require racking to a second fermenter before lagering. With the right pitching rate, using fresh healthy yeast, and proper aeration of the wort prior to pitching, the fermentation of the beer will be complete within 3-8 days (bigger = longer). This time period includes the secondary or conditioning phase of fermentation when the yeast clean up acetaldehyde and diacetyl.

This isn't fully expounded, but doesn't seem to support the notion that beer needs a month in primary.

I'm not saying it's harmful to leave it in primary for a month, and you're right that it can help clarity. But I personally would like to see more evidence to support this notion that apparently all beers should have a full four weeks before bottling (which is becoming the CW at these forums).

 

[PVH]

Posting despite a suspicion that I cannot add anything new to this debate...

I'm not saying it's harmful to leave it in primary for a month, and you're right that it can help clarity. But I personally would like to see more evidence to support this notion that apparently all beers should have a full four weeks before bottling (which is becoming the CW at these forums).

I don't know the answer to this one, but I think it would be hard to show that all beers are better after 4 weeks in primary, presumably because of their contact with the yeast cake.

However, I almost always let mine go for 4 weeks, hefes excepted. This makes my beers better for reasons that have nothing to do with contact with the yeast: it keeps me from drinking them too young. If they're downstairs in the primary, I tend to forget about them.

Also, the yeast cake gets so packed down after 4 weeks that it's hard to screw up racking the beer to the keg. I end up with nice, clear beer with minimal effort.

For me, it's more about it being OK to leave the beer in primary for a long time than a belief that doing so makes the beer noticeably better.

 

[flabyboy]

I was not implicating any names, just know that's faulty reasoning. Seriously, are you going to brew a hefeweizen, a mild , an IPA or APA and ferment for a month? Sorry if you think that's an acceptable technique, it's not.

Out of curiousity, what harm is going to come to my hefe if its in primary for 4weeks? Its not being exposed to oxygen or anything. Why is it unacceptable?

 

[flabyboy]

Posting despite a suspicion that I cannot add anything new to this debate...



I don't know the answer to this one, but I think it would be hard to show that all beers are better after 4 weeks in primary, presumably because of their contact with the yeast cake.

However, I almost always let mine go for 4 weeks, hefes excepted. This makes my beers better for reasons that have nothing to do with contact with the yeast: it keeps me from drinking them too young. If they're downstairs in the primary, I tend to forget about them.

Also, the yeast cake gets so packed down after 4 weeks that it's hard to screw up racking the beer to the keg. I end up with nice, clear beer with minimal effort.

For me, it's more about it being OK to leave the beer in primary for a long time than a belief that doing so makes the beer noticeably better.

this is exactly what I agree with. what harm can come from it. From what I here autolysis is a thing of the past

 

[flabyboy]

here is a post from another thread that has an interview with John Palmer and Jamil regarding leaving the beer in primary


To Secondary or Not? John Palmer and Jamil Zainasheff Weigh In

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This was confirmed on a March episode of Brew Strong where John and Jamil talk about how secondary fermentation is an outdated homebrewing technique. John even says that the information in the 1st edition of How to Brew (the web version) is no longer relevant.

I couldn't find a transcript of the show so I recorded that portion of the conversation. May have missed a few Ah's and Um's, but the main content is there.

Hope this helps:

John: And unfortunately I'm an perpetuator of the myth at HowtoBrew.com. The 1st edition talks about the benefits of transferring the beer off the yeast.

Jamil: Well that was the popular way of doing things. But that was what, the 1st edition? Stop getting the thing off the internet. Buy yourself the 3rd addition copy and get the updated information.

John: As we've gotten more educated on how much good healthy yeast you need for optimum fermentation the advice that we used to give 20 years ago has changed. 10 years ago, 20 years ago, homebrewers were using with a single packet of dry yeast that was taped to the top of the can. There weren't as many liquid yeast cultures available.

Jamil: People didn't make starters either.

John: Right. So the whole health and vitality of yeast was different back then compared to know. Back then it made sense. You had weaker yeast that had finished fermentation that were more susceptible to autolysis and breaking down. Now that is not the case. The bar of homebrewing has risen to where we are able to make beer that has the same robustness as professional beer. We've gotten our techniques and understanding of what makes a good fermentation up to that level, so you don't need to transfer the beer off the yeast to avoid autolysis like we used to recommend.

Jamil: Unless you are going to do long term at warm temperatures, but even then we are talking over a month. I thought about this as well and I think one of the reasons autolysis....and the fact that people were using weak yeast in inappropriate amounts and the transfer would add some oxygen to it which would help attenuate a few more points. I think that was part of the deal why transferring was considered appropriate years ago.

John: But these days we don't recommend secondary transfer. Leave it in the primary, you know, a month. Today's fermentations are typically healthy enough that you are not going to get autolysis flavors or off-flavors from leaving the beer on the yeast for an extended period of time.

Jamil: And if you are using healthy yeast and the appropriate amount and the thing is... homebrew style fermentors..if you are using a carboy or plastic bucket which have that broad base when the yeast flocculate out they lay in a nice thin layer. When you're dealing with large, tall...one of the things you know people go "Well the commercial brewers they remove the yeast because it is gonna break down, die, and make the beer bad. We should be doing the same thing." That's where alot of this comes from. But the commerical brewers are working with 100 bbl fermenters that are very tall and put a lot of pressure on the yeast. The yeast are jammed into this little cone in the bottom and they are stacked very deep and there is a lot of heat buildup. The core of that yeast mass can be several degrees C higher than the rest of that yeast mass and it can actually cook the yeast and cause them to die faster and cause those problems with flavor and within a couple of days the viability of that yeast which the commercial brewers are going to reuse is going to drop 25%, 50% over a couple of days so they need to get that yeast out of there. You don't have that restriction as a homebrewer. You've got these broad fermenter bases that allow the yeast to be distributed evently. It's an advantage for cleaning up the beer. You have the advantage that the yeast don't break down as fast. You don't have as high a head pressure. There are a lot of advantages.

 

[McGarnigle]

this is exactly what I agree with. what harm can come from it. From what I here autolysis is a thing of the past

Well, maybe someone doesn't think they'll have enough time to brew for a certain occasion because of all this talk about long primaries. Or they suffer 7-8 weeks of hell on their first brew when it need be only 5-6 weeks.

You're right though, that in almost all cases it can't hurt. I just think these forums have overplayed the claim 'the longer the better' for primarying, and done so with incomplete evidence.

It's just been a peeve of mine. We're very empirical about some issues but not about others.

 

[wildwest450]

Out of curiousity, what harm is going to come to my hefe if its in primary for 4weeks? Its not being exposed to oxygen or anything. Why is it unacceptable?

That style, as is the case with a few, are best consumed young. Fully carbed (kegged) hefes @ 3 weeks are great, as are many other styles. Don't pigeon hole beers based on assumptions.

You'll never know until you try.

 

[emjay]

I was not implicating any names, just know that's faulty reasoning. Seriously, are you going to brew a hefeweizen, a mild , an IPA or APA and ferment for a month? Sorry if you think that's an acceptable technique, it's not.

The idea that 4 weeks is touted as a rigidly strict rule is purely fantasy on your part. 4 weeks is merely considered adequate time for most styles to be finished well and good while not having to constantly mess around with your beer needlessly (beyond establishing that fermentation is not stuck), because every time you do so, I guarantee you are hurting the quality of the finished beer to some extent. And leaving beer a week or two longer will only improve it (again, for the vast majority, but not necessarily all styles, which will be implied throughout the rest of the post as I don't care to keep stipulating this). Obviously you can create a very drinkable beer in only two weeks, and if this hobby is simply about providing you with a constant supply of beer, then by all means go for it, because the improvement you'd see by keeping it twice as long is present, but probably not significant enough most of the time for you to cut your production in half.

But that's still not much of an excuse unless you're really cheap or live in a studio apartment or something with absolutely no space. It just means getting another fermenter or two if you're actually consuming 5gal of beer in a matter of 1-2 weeks, and they really don't cost that much. The result is better beer, so as far as I'm concerned they pay for themselves in no time - which isn't to say you can't produce good or even great beer in 2 weeks or so, because you can - but I think most of us here strive to make the best beer we possibly can.

And rushing your beer is not going to get you there. Sure it may be done with the conversion of sugars but you'd have to be absolutely new to this hobby (or extremely slow) if you think that the only thing yeast does in a beer is sugar->alcohol. It can be 4 weeks, or 3 weeks, or 6 weeks... whatever. It'll be superior to the beer at 2 weeks, 99 times out of 100 (note to the pedants: not a literal statistic.) And yes, 4 weeks is ultimately arbitrary, but the whole point is not to rush the beer, and it approximates a month as well, so it's easy to tell when it's time to bottle or keg. And of course, there are diminishing returns... the improvement from 4 to 5 weeks on the cake is miniscule compared to the improvement from 2 to 3. So the 4-week "rule" serves as a pretty good guideline, but it's only a guideline that aims to provide people with the benefits gained by minimal messing with the beer and just giving the yeast the time and space to do their job - and the job description involves a heck of a lot more than just sheer attenuation, therefore requiring longer hours than it takes just to hit terminal gravity. Ultimately, every brewer has to make judgment calls and even compromises when determining when to rack off the cake, as everybody has different needs and circumstances. It's just not all too often when such needs and circumstances arise for a homebrewer that 2 weeks should be the best call.

 

[wildwest450]

The idea that 4 weeks is touted as a rigidly strict rule is purely fantasy on your part.

Well then, why does it keep coming up thread after thread??

It's just not all too often when such needs and circumstances arise for a homebrewer that 2 weeks should be the best call.

Wrong again, sorry, but that just isn't factual. And if you think my goal is to only make "drinkable" beers, you're sadly mistaken.


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