Yeast question for a Quad - Don't understand BeerSmith....

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agentbud

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A Belgian Quad is next on my list. I've got a good recipe that I have used before but since I live in a suburb of hell, ordering liquid yeast right now is out of the question (normally I would use Wyeast 3787), so I need to sub in a dry yeast this time. I am considering Lallemand Abbaye unless there are some better recommendations...
So here is the question... when I plug everything into BeerSmith, I get an OG of 1.097 with a recommended yeast cell count of 358 billion. The spec sheet says Abbaye has 5x10^9 (5 billion) cells per gram so one 11g packet of Abbaye should have ~55 billion cells. Using basic math, one would think you would then need about 71.6 grams (about 6.5 11g packets) to reach 358 billion cells. However, BeerSmith says I should use 22.1 grams (see pic below). What am I not understanding here?

1717449000409.png
 
The spec sheet says Abbaye has 5x10^9 (5 billion) cells per gram so one 11g packet of Abbaye should have ~55 billion cells.
The spec sheet actually says 5 x 10 9 CFU per gram. How much greater than? Who knows? My guess is that Beersmith is using a different number of CFU/gram. The truth is probably somewhere in between.

Anyway, there's no law that says you can't make a starter from dry yeast if you don't want to pitch a whole bunch of sachets.
 
When I want to make a Tripple or Quad I always make a Blonde of 1.040- 1.050 first then rack that to a keg on brew day and pump the wort onto the entire yeast cake. I feel it's better to drink the starter then pitch it down the drain. I do overbuild starters and only make a starter out of dry yeast when I need it in the future. Use to be, just buy another pack but now days; ya know.
 
A Belgian Quad is next on my list.... I am considering Lallemand Abbaye unless there are some better recommendations...
Personally I'd go for Fermentis BE-256. Abbaye is a S. cerevisiae x kudriavzevii hybrid like WLP500 Monastery and 1214 Belgian Abbey (“Chimay”?).

The spec sheet says Abbaye has 5x10^9 (5 billion) cells per gram so one 11g packet of Abbaye should have ~55 billion cells.
The spec sheet says at least 5 billion/g - it varies by strain but typically dry yeast within the best before is up at somewhere around 20 billion/g.
 
Personally I'd go for Fermentis BE-256. Abbaye is a S. cerevisiae x kudriavzevii hybrid like WLP500 Monastery and 1214 Belgian Abbey (“Chimay”?).


The spec sheet says at least 5 billion/g - it varies by strain but typically dry yeast within the best before is up at somewhere around 20 billion/g.
Funnily enough, when I went to place an order, they were out of Lallemand Abbaye so I went with Fermentis BE-256. Seems like I read somewhere that BE-256 used to be called Abbaye. Wonder why the name change? Is the BE-256 the same strain as westmalle / westvleteren, etc?
 
Is the BE-256 the same strain as westmalle / westvleteren, etc?
It has British origins but is probably similar to WLP540, which may or may not have origins at Rochefort. But actual Rochefort dregs give a far more complex result, presumably because they're using a multistrain whereas the yeast labs generally just sell single strains.
 
The spec sheet says at least 5 billion/g - it varies by strain but typically dry yeast within the best before is up at somewhere around 20 billion/g.
Is there an echo in here?
Seems like I read somewhere that BE-256 used to be called Abbaye.
They used to call it Belgian (hence the "BE"). They don't call it Belgian anymore since someone figured out that it's really British as noted above. They still recommend it for Belgian styles, and I've been pretty happy with it in those. I don't think they ever called it Abbaye, especially considering that a competitor uses that name.
 
Below from the morebeer site on the page for BE-256. Not sure where they pulled that info from...
Also says the same thing on the northernbrewer website....

1717792352565.png
 
"BE-256 was selected from a Belgian yeast bank through a specific screening process"

The question is where did the Belgian yeast bank get it? DNA sequencing says it's British.
 
Supposedly the story is that after the Wehrmacht paid a visit to Rochefort they had to start from scratch after WWII with the help of some of the other Trappist breweries, they tried some of their yeast but they didn't really work. So a consultant working for them some 15-20 years after the war went through the Palm yeast bank and came back with a yeast that they've used ever since.

Genetically it's right in the heart of the British brewery yeasts, along with Ringwood, Nottingham and all those so it could have come from anywhere given the long history of beery exchanges between Britain and Belgium. What is clear is that it's no longer purely "British", it has adapted to life in Belgium in particular when it comes to alcohol tolerance.
 
I decided to go with BE-256 for the brew tonight. However, I noticed that the yeast package lists the ideal temperature as 15-20C / 59-68F. But their website lists the ideal temperature as 18-26C / 64.4-78.8F. Any thoughts on which of those is correct?
 
yeast package lists the ideal temperature as 15-20C / 59-68F. But their website lists the ideal temperature as 18-26C / 64.4-78.8F.
This is quite a disparity. I don't remember seeing that lower temp range when I used this yeast in March. The website package picture shows the higher range, as does the website's descriptive text. Could you have a newer or older version somehow? Seems like some kind of typo, most likely.
1718997497693.png

fwiw, my recent BE-256 Duvel clone started at 68°F and came out okay.
 
the packaging of the ones I have are a little different. See pic below. They are dated E 05 2025.

BE-256.jpg
 
I noticed that the yeast package lists the ideal temperature as 15-20C / 59-68F. But their website lists the ideal temperature as 18-26C / 64.4-78.8F. Any thoughts on which of those is correct?
Fermentis updated their temperature range recommendations a while back. This caused considerable consternation among some homebrewers, but that horse has already been beaten well beyond death on other threads. However, they did not dump all of the packaging that still had the old ranges listed. So they were distributing new yeast with the old temp ranges for a while. It could be that they still are for strains like BE-256 that probably don't do really high volume sales compared to US-05 or S-04.

This statement appears at the top of the "Beer and Brewing Solutions" page on their website:

Note that you could find different temperature recommendations on our 11,5grs sachets or on an old version of our TDS. In a logic of continuous improvement and thanks to the applied research, conducted by our R&D teams on our different yeast strains, we have recently updated our fermentation temperature recommendations to better serve brewers and homebrewers. For sustainable reasons, we made the choice to use our remaining stock of printed sachets before we re-print new ones, this is the reason why you could find differences on usage recommendations between sachets (or older versions of our TDS) and our website. We’ll make the adjustments on the sachets as soon as possible. In the meantime, don’t worry if you have already fermented your beers by following our previous usage recommendations, you’ll still obtain GREAT results!

Anyway, I always let my quads free rise.
 
Fermentis updated their temperature range recommendations a while back. This caused considerable consternation among some homebrewers, but that horse has already been beaten well beyond death on other threads. However, they did not dump all of the packaging that still had the old ranges listed. So they were distributing new yeast with the old temp ranges for a while. It could be that they still are for strains like BE-256 that probably don't do really high volume sales compared to US-05 or S-04.

This statement appears at the top of the "Beer and Brewing Solutions" page on their website:

Note that you could find different temperature recommendations on our 11,5grs sachets or on an old version of our TDS. In a logic of continuous improvement and thanks to the applied research, conducted by our R&D teams on our different yeast strains, we have recently updated our fermentation temperature recommendations to better serve brewers and homebrewers. For sustainable reasons, we made the choice to use our remaining stock of printed sachets before we re-print new ones, this is the reason why you could find differences on usage recommendations between sachets (or older versions of our TDS) and our website. We’ll make the adjustments on the sachets as soon as possible. In the meantime, don’t worry if you have already fermented your beers by following our previous usage recommendations, you’ll still obtain GREAT results!

Anyway, I always let my quads free rise.
Thanks. I did not see that while perusing their site. I'll go with the range listed online then.
 
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