Can you over pitch yeast?

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RobinW

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I'm doing a recipe that calls for safale s-04. I've used this stuff before and it has always stalled on me at 1022. This time I've done a starter. I've got it going in 800ml of DME on a stirrer, poured off the spent liquid and tipped 3/4 of the yeast into a sterile jar.. I dumped another 800ml of DME into the flask and let it rock for another 12 hours and did the same.

I now have almost 1/4 of a 500ml maisson jar full of yeast. I plan to pitch the lot into this 20L brew this week. Will it cause me any issues if I'm over pitching? It should be a 1065 beer.

I upsized to a 3L flask today.


yeast.jpg
 
Yes you can over pitch yeast can produce flavor or remove flavor.
 
It’s very difficult to overpitch yeast & have noticeable detrimantal results on homebrew scales.

With S-04 it just needs a bit of caressing. I start out at 18C & after 72 hours I bump the temp up .4C/day. Once high krausen starts to pull back (sometimes as early as day 4) I also give a gentle swirl a couple of times a day. I’ve never had it stall by following these steps. It’s usually fully done by day 7
 
Cheers guys. I've tried upping temps and swirling on previous batches without success. This time I'll try a bigger hammer :)
 
Never had a problem with S-04, its my go to dry yeast I like it much more than US-05.
At least it finishes properly, drops bright when its finished and forms a cake that sticks like the preverbal .... to a blanket.

Looking at the picture of the yeast in the OP - it's very dark, frankly it looks old and not at all what I would expect from a nice fresh culture.
Mark
 
For a 1.065 beer I would still reactivate that in a small volume starter and pitch it at high Krausen but that's me.
Under pitching is much more to worry about then over pitching. IMO
 
Brew Day yesterday. The plan changed and I was going to cube 17L but I didn't get the expected boil off, my volumes where out, so I dropped the wort into a fermentor, and put 1.5L into a flask. I pitched the collected yeast into the flask and it was away within the hour and booming about 3 hours later. I pitched the whole flask into the fermentor and away it went. It looked like this late last night. Now that's active :) Fingers crossed my stall issue is gone. It dropped 3 Brix points today alone.

starter.jpg
 
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