8
Danstar BRY-97 is a great option for American-style IPAs. It starts out kind of rough, but if you give it enough time to condition, it makes an amazing beer.
Fermentis Safale US-05 and Danstar Nottingham also a popular choices for American-style IPAs. You should ferment them at the low end of their temperature ranges.
For English-style IPAs, you can use ...
8
we can get away with re-using yeast, because Mutation isn't instantaneous, it take multiple generations to change a whole batches properties. Also bigger brewers use a "mother culture" to grow more yeast, like making a starters from the same beginning yeast over and over.
In my own experience, i have used the same yeast batch for 3-4 times with no changes ...
7
The starter is still good in that time. Very roughly, a 2L starter, presumably from a vial or smack pack, probably netted you between 200bn and 400bn cells. If you used 3/4 of it, you probably have 50-100bn cells left … about the amount in a smack pack/vial. As such, you should probably make a new starter from the remains of the previous one.
7
Without pressure canning, unfermented wort doesn't have a low enough pH to be shelf stable.
From The Maltose Falcons website:
The process is almost identical to the one that you or your family may have used to preserve peaches, tomatoes, pickles, etc. The normal preservation method is hot water bath canning, but since wort is a low acid food you must use ...
6
Mostly economical, yes.
Another reason is potentially limited (or non-existent) commercial availability of specific strains. Either the yeast company's seasonal strain releases or something cultivated from yeast remaining in the bottle.
Another reason is to develop a "house" strain, or to modify the behavior of an existing strain. For instance, the good-...
6
The nutrient in a Wyeast pouch is around 1.020. There's not enough of it there to have an appreciable effect on your starter gravity. You can pretty much discount it entirely.
6
Specific gravity measures density, which is mass/volume. If you measured the total mass of your system (3000g + 300g) you would have gotten 3300 grams, but the volume is not 3000 ml because you added the DME and it increases the volume of the solution. If the volume increased by 174 ml you would get 3300/3174 = 1.040 for the density.
In other words, the ...
6
Almost certainly the starter yeast is yeast slurry that's been stored frozen in liquid nitrogen. Interestingly, one of the most common methods is to store it inside sealed-off portions of plastic drinking straws.
Commercial yeast labs have large collections (sometimes called libraries) of pure cultures of different strains of yeast stored this way (pure ...
5
US-05 (= Wyeast1056, = WLP001) is a pretty good option for IPAs.
Dry yeast should be rehydrated, but the higher cell count generally means you don't need a starter.
5
If the starter was not hopped, you should be ok since the hops are needed to produce the skunky flavors.
The UV radiation in sunlight can damage yeast cells, but they are capable of self-repair to a degree, so there should still be plenty of viable cells to continue fermentation.
It's a good idea to not pitch the spent starter wort in general, here, I ...
5
You don't need a starter since you're pitching to 1/4 batch size that a whitelabs vial is good for. Normally you'd use 2-4 vials for a 20 liter batch, depending upon gravity, so that's equivalent to 1/2 to 1 a vial for a 5 liter batch.
For the detailed figures, see Always making a starter vs. following package description.
One way to know the OG prior to ...
5
I do this about once or twice a year. I'm an all grain brewer, so I typically just brew a batch of base malt. You can do the same with buying some DME/LME and adding that to the right amount of water to get the SG around 1.035-1.040.
Your process sounds good, although I would probably blend all the DME and water at once so you can check the SG, and then ...
5
The easiest way to determine the effect of starter gravity is to decant the starter so the amount is negligible. In addition, I've found that it makes better beer.
5
If the starter fully fermented, most of the 1.040 should be gone; normal yeast attenuation is around 75%, so you should have 1L of 1.010 beer in the starter vessel.
1L of 1.010 beer into 19L of 1.076 OG wort would reduce the OG down to about 1.073. (76 points * 19L + 10 points * 1L) / 20L = 72.7 points = 1.073.
Though if possible, you should try to cold-...
5
Sanitation is not sterilization. You might find a couple jars out of a batch last longer than others. But the only way to be sure is to buy a pressure canner. They are relatively cheap and can be used in the kitchen later for cooking as well. Mason jars make great containers, but lets not lose site of what they are really made for... sterile canning. In ...
5
Malt extract does not need to be boiled to make beer. It is perfectly possible to make beer using extract and cold water although it s a little easier if you dissolve the extract in boiling water first - just to make it more mobile and to pasteurise it if you feel it is needed. But just getting it hot to get out of the can and into the fermentation vessel is ...
4
I get the same kraeusen when using liquid yeast - it's not from hydration shock. In fact, the dead yeast that don't survive hydration simply fall to the bottom of the fermentor.
The reason for the kraeusen is the constant churning of the wort during active fermentation, which mixes proteins, tannins and hop-alpha acids to create the structure for the ...
4
That sounds like a plan. When the starter is cool the yeast will sediment quicker so you can pour off the spent wort easier.
Definitely take yeast out of the fridge on brewday, let it warm. If you have some additional sterile wort, then you can decant the spent wort and pitch the fresh wort as soon as the yeast has come up to room temp. Otherwise, if you ...
4
It is recommended to decant and dispose of the starter beer because the starter beer is nasty and oxidized, nasty and devoid of fermentable sugar by the time the yeast have reproduced to pitching levels. "You would not brew a beer with this level of oxidation, so why would blend it into your beer?", goes the thinking.
4
Strictly speaking, as long as you can ensure adequate and even oxygen contact with all of the yeast cells (a hard task, given the viscosity of yeast slurry), and provided the oxygenation comes directly before pitching, oxygenating the yeast/slurry itself is completely sufficient to provide for adequate growth in the following phase. Even more strictly ...
4
Smack packs contain yeast nutrients, and sugars nothing magical. Its just a mini starter in a bag for proofing yeast for direct pitching. Don't need it at all If doing your own starter. If you do all grain your wort has all the nutrients it needs.
Sounds like your 1st stage went fine. I would just step up as normal.
At the risk of infection just throw the ...
4
According to Beer Advocate,
This is when the beer has been exposed to ultraviolet light for a period of time. Hop-derived molecules, called isohumulones, are basically ripped apart.
So unless you're adding hops to your starter (which you shouldn't be), light shouldn't be much an issue.
4
Just do it
Nothing you described is needed or beneficial with modern liquid yeast packages. For example Weast's Activator:
The Activator™ package was designed with superior UV light- and oxygen-barrier material to extend shelf life, making our 6 month from manufacture date Product Warranty possible. Yeast slowly depletes energy reserves while in storage. ...
4
I use a 750 ml bottle, sanitised aluminium foil and a rubber band. Keep aerated by stirring it gently, occasionally during the first 12h; I stir every 6th hour or so. After 18-48h I use it or refrigerate it for later use.
I use White Labs instructions for reference, no matter the brand of yeast I buy.
Cheers!
3
It does not need to be 5.00000 gallons, don't worry about the small differences.
You can aerate after pitching the yeast, so long as it's immediately after; the yeast need oxygen during the lag phase, but once alcohol starts being produced, you don't want to introduce oxygen at that point.
3
It's almost always a good idea. Pitching the right amount of healthy, active yeast is one of the easiest and most important things you can do. This is especially true for high-gravity beer, which is harder for the yeast to grow in. There's a great and fairly concise discussion of these issues on Mr. Malty, as well as a calculator that tells you how many ...
3
Ideally, you want the liquid portion of the starter to be crystal clear, meaning no yeast is left in suspension. In this scenario, you carefully pour the liquid off the sediment, leaving a enough to swirl around, bringing the sediment up into suspension, and then pitch.
If the starter is small (1 or 2 quarts), and the yeast hasn't settled out completely, ...
3
Increasing the innoculation rate alone will not necessarily result in a linear increase in cells. You'll have twice as many cells now competing for the same amount of sugars and nutrients, they may not be able to do as well.
White and Zainasheff's Yeast has some empirical data about changing the innoculation rate by changing the volume of a starter, with a ...
3
There's only so much oxygen that the N-hundred billion cells that you pitch can "hold". As well, there's only so much oxygen that can be diffused into the liquid containing those cells. And not only will those pitched cells need more oxygen, but their offspring cells will need oxygen, as well. As such, we oxygenate the wort, not just the pitch.
3
Yes, it roughly lines up using my preferred calculator if I use the stir-plate aeration options (the "C.White" option has 124 bn cells, "Kai" has 95 bn cells).
I'll note that the Brewer's Friend calculator does show 56% viability, or about 59 bn cells, not 36 bn.
What sort of aeration method are you using for the starter? That has a huge impact on the ...
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