The great debate. Sprinkle vs rehydrate vs starter.
Who would have thought my lil angry rant at my beer turning to **** would have caused such a blow out of opinion & experience.
Thanks for all of your input. It's good to hear of other people's success and as in my case misfortune, at least I'm not alone.
Have to say I'm on the "starter" apex of the triangle & will probably go to my grave believing that pitching a starter of heathy yeast that was actively fermenting wort days earlier ***** all over pitching dry or rehydrating..
All stated is on my own personal experience. Countless great beers using starters based on dry and liquid strains, a very memorable few beers where I've pitched dry or rehydrated to end up with beer full of yeasty esters due to yeast stress, under pitch or my own process/sanitation issues.
Which brings me to another point in regards to under pitching, not sure who it was someone mentioned on this post that I may have under pitched, I had 60l of wort @ 1.049 and pitched 3.5pks of fresh/new us05, pkt states "sufficient for 23l of wort" so 3.5pks should be sufficient for 80.5L of wort, do they just lie on the packet? If that's the case, and I need to pitch double what the packet suggests, 6 packs of us05 would cost me $30 at my lhbs, vs 1 pack plus $8 of ldme to make a 5L starter, plus the reassurance of knowing your pitching healthy active yeast, the starter route although extra work and a little more work and stuffing around is a no brainer in my opinion.