Champagne Yeast - How Much

[brettprevans]

using champagne yeast for the first time (in a RIS). how much do I need for 20L to finish this baby off? online sponsor sells it in a 5g pack. is this enough? recipe is below

500g cracked roast barley
500g cracked light crystal
1.7kg can Draught
1.7kg can Porter
1.7kg can Stout (no brand names are listed)
1kg brewing sugar
1kg dried brew booster

60g styrian goldings
40g East Kent Goldings
20g saaz

steeped the grains in 6L water, and boiled that for 60 mins, with the styrian added at start boil, the EKG added 15 mins from flameout, and the saaz at flamout.

added the 3 cans into his fermenter, put the boiling wort on top of that, stirred to dissolve, and added cold water up to 20L mark. aerate this crap out of it.
champagne yeast to finish it off, expect OG of 1115, and an FG of 1028.

 

[Muggus]

From my experience, a 5g powdered champagne yeast should be able to deal with an OG of 1.115.
Good aeration will probably help. From memory this stuff doesn't waste time, it gets to work quickly, especially at temps above 20 degrees.

 

[Tyred]

Is this a specific champagne yeast or a generic one ? The reason for asking is wine and some champagne yeasts can leave extra unwanted flavours when the brew is left on them for too long. With a brew this heavy it will require aging to allow the mixture to mellow. The yeast should be able to chew through it in 2 - 3 weeks at around 20degrees. Very good aeration will be required at the start for the yeast as well.

 

[pint of lager]

Just looking at your ingredients, you probably won't need any maltodextrin that is included in the brewing sugar and brewbooster. Stick to malt and dextrose.

Back to your yeast. Wine yeasts produce a winey flavour which is wrong in a beer and beer yeasts produce a beer flavour. One good strategy is to use a decent beer yeast to start off with, and then, if it doesn't pull the brew down far enough, then pitch a wine yeast. That way the bulk of the fermentation occurs with a beer yeast.

Try some Nottingham dried yeast, at least two sachets and three if you can afford it. Taste your sg sample after the beer yeast has done its work. Follow up with at least 5gms of champagne yeast if the sg is not down far enough.

A good strategy is to use 1/2 cup fresh yeast slurry from a previous brew. This will really go to work on your RIS. See if you can work your brewing schedule out so that you are serial brewing with the right yeast for the RIS in a lower og brew, then you will have fresh slurry for your big beer.

Make sure you have a blowoff tube fitted, a big stout will throw a big krausen.

 

[blackbock]

Yet another option is to top crop some (typically English-type) ale yeast from a brew shortly beforehand. If you do this at the high Krusen stage, the yeast will be very active and almost no lag time will ensue. You won't need as much yeast if you do this as you would if you had pitched slurry, a lot of which is dead yeast, or yeast waste products.

I know a lot of American recipes call for Champagne yeast, but really I think it is a 'last resort' option, as POL suggests. There are better ways to attenuate beer wort than using wine yeast.

 

[brettprevans]

the champange yeast is to finish it off. IE once the 40g of Nottingham (4 packs) has done its trick if it still has further to go then champagne yeast to finish.

Champagne yeast will be crawtbrewer brand.

No stout slurry left from recent brews next time.

I thought the malto dex would be overkill but im copying a receipe so I figured i'd do it the same 1st time round then alter. Im not even sure what the brewbooster is as I havent got it yet, so i dont know what im going to use. I guess i might use LDME instead. or maybe half light and have dark?

re aeration...i going to aerate the hell out of it. pour between 2 fermentors 10 or so times

thanks for the feedback.


no worries about krausen.. I have a 60L fermentor. only making 20L beer so there should be heaps of headroom