National Homebrew Club Ireland

Hi Folks,

I've only ever used dried yeast (and its fine) but between dodgy fermementation temps and that 'homebrew taste' I keep getting I wanted to try liquid, maybe the custom liquid yeast mash kits for a handy brew over christmas but I was wondering do I need to go down the route of making a starter or can you just pitch the liquid yeast straight in (the wort will be well aerated and at 20C).

Going for white labs 'pitchable' yeast

Unless the beer you're making is very low in gravity and the vial is very fresh, you really are better off making a starter. Pitch rate is very important to ensure a clean fermentation. Making a starter can be daunting if you haven't done it before, but it's a doddle.

For my first yeast starters I used a 2 litre bottle of lidl mineral water and fermented the starter in the plastic bottle. You don't actually need a stir plate and conical. Liquid yeasts are far superior to dried and are a must for styles like Belgian, English imo. The dried equivalents just don't cut the mustard. Again imo..

You mentioned that homebrew taste :o. Before you look at your yeast you need to start with your water. Poor water quality will lead to poor beer. After that you need to get an understanding of the right amount of yeast to pitch.

Thanks have been meaning to look into the water here. Where do I go about getting a profile (Letterkenny). Is it the EPA?

The state water report is not much help as it does not give you the information you need. A salifert kit for testing hardness in the water will help alot. Not sure how bad the chlorine is in your water but you must treat that.

Unless you're unluckly enough to have a supply with very hard or very soft water, I wouldn't worry about mineral additions for the moment. As Dempsey says, chlorine has to be removed, it's been the downfall of many a home brewer. For ease, use campden tablets, or else some sort of carbon filtering.

Good tips folks thanks. i know the water here is soft but I'm just not sure how soft...i'll try the campden tablets though!

I'd recommend doing a couple of starters. First time I tried them I thought there was a big difference. Could just be confirmation bias, could have just been coincidence but I use them most of the time now. I agree not to worry about a stir plate, at least not yet, I did starters for well over a year without one and have only recently added one to my set up. You just need some extra time for a simple shaken starter. Just do it in a demijohn instead. Give it a swirl whenever you think of it and you should be fine.

Making a yeast starter is really easy, there's lot of vids on YouTube. A couple of tips though:

- remember to aerate the starter well - remember that the objective is to increase the cell count of what is in the vial. Aeration is required in order for the cells to reproduce and to be healthy.
- observe the same rules around sanitisation. Everything that touches your cooled wort needs to sanitised with StarSan or similar - funnel, spoon etc.

Making a starter will show you that the yeast is viable. Saves you all the waste of time and money of pitching a sub-standard yeast.


With regards water:

Water is one of your least important variables (apart from removing Chlorine with Campden Tablet) in the brewing process.

Most important is time and temperature control of your Mash/your Boil and most importantly your Fermentation T/T profiles!

Quote from: Will_D on December 19, 2016, 09:41:02 PM
Making a starter will show you that the yeast is viable. Saves you all the waste of time and money of pitching a sub-standard yeast.


With regards water:

Water is one of your least important variables (apart from removing Chlorine with Campden Tablet) in the brewing process.

Most important is time and temperature control of your Mash/your Boil and most importantly your Fermentation T/T profiles!

Disagree, cleanliness is most important imo

Quote from: delzep on December 20, 2016, 01:20:22 AM

Quote from: Will_D on December 19, 2016, 09:41:02 PM
Making a starter will show you that the yeast is viable. Saves you all the waste of time and money of pitching a sub-standard yeast.


With regards water:

Water is one of your least important variables (apart from removing Chlorine with Campden Tablet) in the brewing process.

Most important is time and temperature control of your Mash/your Boil and most importantly your Fermentation T/T profiles!

Disagree, cleanliness is most important imo

Disagree, godliness is most important.

Actually, on reflection, it's at least next to cleanliness.

-Barry

According to White Labs you aren't growing yeast cells when you make a starter.
See last question on this interview with Neva Parker:
http://www.homebrewtalk.com/science-suds-interview-neva-parker-white-labs.html (http://www.homebrewtalk.com/science-suds-interview-neva-parker-white-labs.html)

This was something Chris White said at brewcon previously.
I don't buy it though. It would be interesting to put it to the test.

Quote from: Bazza on December 20, 2016, 08:57:48 AM

Disagree, godliness is most important.

Actually, on reflection, it's at least next to cleanliness.

-Barry

You have won this thread sir :D

I always describe a starter as taking yeast from 1st, 2nd, 3rd gear for wort you want to hit the ground running rather than straining your yeast.
Feeding yeast also allows it to multiply so I'm a little confused about her comments.

Quote from: DEMPSEY on December 18, 2016, 08:12:16 PM
You mentioned that homebrew taste :o. Before you look at your yeast you need to start with your water. Poor water quality will lead to poor beer. After that you need to get an understanding of the right amount of yeast to pitch.

I know I'm late on this thread (Newbie) but total agree.  I have just done 5 batches to date. one Kit and 4 simple extracts plus LME or DME or both.  I have a decent pallet, have tried plenty of craft beers and to be honest, I am really enjoying my very simple extracts and the quality so far has been Excellent.  I think it's down to the water.  I have terrible water (South Meath), hard as nails.  I have a softener, that removes all the limescale and I use an inline drinking filter for all the water that goes into my brews.....  so far so good.  I am only using dry yeast (Stock Coopers APA) at the moment.

Perhaps a brew with purchased water...  5 x 5Ltr  Use the same ingredients and see if it tastes better

Her comments do make some sense, when growing yeast it's idealy in multiples of 10. So to get growth out of a starter you would be looking at at least a 5l starter.
Less then that is like overpitching. Enough food for them to wake up and get going but not enough to get the exponential growth needed to produce a fully healthy generation.

I ended up using wlp001 in a 22l APA with an OG of 1.048. It kicked off after about 18 hours and within a week it was down to 1.010! Its bottled now but the taste was very clean.

The yeast was dated to December and used in mid Jan so fresh enough I guess.

Going to try a lager yeast next straight pitch and try and keep below 1.050, but so far the results are promising!

I was looking on the White labs site.
They specifically say a starter is not necessary with the purepitch for 1 vial and an SG of 1.050 or less.
For 2 vials no starter is required for 1.065 or less.
They say you can do it. If you want to decrease lag time.

Based on lots of assumptions around freshness and storage. Try it and prove it, I like to know from a liquid starter even overnight that my yeast isn't straining because I overshot in my brewday numbers or had substandard yeast to start

I brewed a 1.060+ IPA last month.  I pitched 1 pack of pure pitch WLP001 direct.  Haven't seen yeast take off like it before without doing a starter.  Amazing stuff.

I've had opposite experience with recent white labs packs. First generation very sluggish and under-attenuation even with starter. Second generation was fine though.

Maybe you got a really fresh pack that stayed chilled during transport

Yeast is a living thing, as Brewers we have no real way of know it's viability unless you do a starter. I do them for peace of mind to save wasting a 5 hour brewday, each to his or her own