Lager Yeast Pitching Temperature

[Thirsty Boy]

Interesting, however I now ask myself (Hope this doesn't come across as a stupid question): how do the commercial breweries keep their yeast always at optimum?. How do they limit the number of generations for example? I am guessing they must have some sort of very organised cultivation system. How do they produce generation zero for every batch?
cheers

Pitch rates - they crop a given amount of yeast from one fermenter to the next. Its not the amount of generations growth that the yeast have done "altogether" its the amount they do in the fermenter that we are referring to.

They also do go back to Gen 1 after a certain number of re-pitches. Either buying it in new or propagating from a stored culture (usually an agar slant or similar) and depending on their sophistication re-doing the stored culture from a cryogenically stored master. Or perhaps buying a new master from a yeast bank.

TB

 

[Bribie G]

............. a cryogenically stored master. Or perhaps buying a new master from a yeast bank.

TB

However the cryogenic masters have difficulty in resurrecting the nipples for some reason.





<_<

 

[Josh]

For a 23L batch I will make a 3L starter a week before brew day. Then once the starter is done on the stir plate, I will put it in the fridge to drop the yeast out.

On brew day I will make 23L of wort. 20L into the cube and I will decant the original 3L of starter beer off and replace with 3L of chilled wort. This I will ferment at low temps to get the yeast working. By the time I have the cube down to pitching temp (10C) the starter yeast is in full swing and ready to be pitched straight into the cold wort.

I don't have any problems getting my lagers to ferment out. And I don't have fermentation flavour issues.

 

[Bizier]

For a 23L batch I will make a 3L starter a week before brew day. Then once the starter is done on the stir plate, I will put it in the fridge to drop the yeast out.

On brew day I will make 23L of wort. 20L into the cube and I will decant the original 3L of starter beer off and replace with 3L of chilled wort. This I will ferment at low temps to get the yeast working. By the time I have the cube down to pitching temp (10C) the starter yeast is in full swing and ready to be pitched straight into the cold wort.

I don't have any problems getting my lagers to ferment out. And I don't have fermentation flavour issues.

:beer:

Listen to the man, for he does not lie.

ED: hehe, I posted at 1056

 

[Zwickel]

I'm confused as to why people seperate growth from fermentation. They are intertwined. Yeast multiply, it's what they do. It's all they do. Fermentation is merely a method of generating energy to achieve that goal. The only real difference between the two stages of initial oxidative multiplication and fermentation is the speed at which they do it due to the aforementioned inefficiency.

To clarify my original post, I fail to see anything wrong with pitching warm for two reasons: (1) It allows the yeast to multiply faster; and (2) done correctly, will not produce fusel alcohols because these are only produced during fermentation, not aerobic respiration. Therefore, provided you can lower the temperature prior to fermentation taking place, it will have no effect on the flavour of the beer.

apologies for my poor english, Ill try my best:

As I wrote, fusel production depends very much on fermentation temps. The higher the temp, the more fusel will be produced. Since there is a huge amount of wort necessary to produce a sufficient starter, youll get a lot of fusels in it. If youre not able to decant the used wort, youll get all that crappy stuff in your beer. To avoid that adversity, Id prefer to prepare the yeast in a separate vessel and also decant the used wort. Dont forget, the amount of yeast that is required for lager/pilseners is much higher than that is needed for ales or weizen.

The most important unwanted fusels are:

* 3-Methylbutan-1-ol (Isoamylalcohol)
* 2-Methylbutan-1-ol (Active Amylalcohol)
* 2-Methylpropan-1-ol (Isobutanol)
* Propan-1-ol (Propanol)

Here are some examples of fusel content in bottom fermented beers, such as lager/pilseners, means cold fermented
and top fermenting beers like weizen, means warm fermented:

all numbers are determined in mg

PILSENERS:

Beck's 59
Bitburger Premium Pils 65
Brinkhoff's No.1 89
DAB Pilsener 91
Detmolder Pilsener 79
Einbecker Premium Pils 62
EKU Pils 72
Fairlight Pilsener Light 66
Flensburger Pilsener 72
Foster's (Australien; in Deutschland gebraut) 66
Graf Ignaz 57
Hasserder Pils 63
Hohenfelder Pilsener 82
Holsten Pilsener 74
Jever Pilsener 75
Knig-Pilsener 62
Krombacher Pilsener 93
Kulmbacher Premium Pils 71
Licher Pilsener 90
Lwenbru Original 82
Lbzer 79
Moritz Fiege Leicht 24
Oettinger Pilsener 121
Pilsener Urquell 74
Radeberger Pilsener 88
Rolinck Pilsener 60
Tip Pilsener Feinherb 75
Tuborg Pilsener(in Deutschland gebraut) 94
Veltins 68
Warsteiner 83
Wrzburger Hofbru Pilsner 68

LAGER

Alex Rolinck (Lager) 64
Binding (Lager) 80
Dortmunder Hansa Export 89
Dortmunder Union Export 93
Grolsch (Lager) 91
Hacker-Pschorr (Hellbier) 66
Jgerbier (Export Hell) 76

WEIZEN

Chiemseer Dunkle Weisse 126
Erdinger Weibier klar 90
Huber Weisses Fresh 160
Huber Weisses Leicht 90
Maisels Weisse 138
Paulaner Hefe-Weibier 133
Schneider Weisse Original 115
Schfferhofer Hefeweizen 147

As you can see, top fermenting beers are containing significant higher levels in fusel alcohols than bottom fermenting beers although, as I wrot earlier in the thread, a certain amount of fusel in top fermented beers would be wanted.
Not so in lager/pilsener beers.

Cheers mate :icon_cheers:

 

[Synthetase]

Zwickel, I understand and I certainly decant my starters (I'd spin the cells down with a centrifuge if I had one) mainly because most of them aren't made of malt but honey and yeast extract and I don't want all that rubbish in the beer. I was just talking about the batch as a whole. By the way, your English is very good

Edit: by the way, for the above fusel levels in mg. mg per what? Litre?

[snip] re-doing the stored culture from a cryogenically stored master. Or perhaps buying a new master from a yeast bank.

TB

I store my yeast in 1 mL of 20 % glycerol broth at -20 degrees. I'm sure it's not as stable over long term (years) as -80 but, well, I can't keep them in my lab.

 

[Thirsty Boy]

snip ...

I store my yeast in 1 mL of 20 % glycerol broth at -20 degrees. I'm sure it's not as stable over long term (years) as -80 but, well, I can't keep them in my lab.

I tried freezing my yeast in glycerol... but didn't have a lot of luck. I think the somewhat dodgey domestic fridge/freezer might have played a part. I store mine on agar slants now.. which work very well when I remember to re-culture every 6months or so. I am trying desperately to cut down on the number of strains I use so the re-culturing isn't so much damn work.

I'm still with zwickel though.. for me its about the amount of growth to achieve the maximum cell count (which will be dependent on total nutirients of course) and targeting that to happen as much as possible during the starter where I can discard anything pushed out at higher temp - and to have the lag and growth phases short and sharp, with the minimum of generations growth during the log phase before the shootin's over with.

Plus I just dont think yeast want you to cool them down. Mine only ever go from cooler to warmer. Start at about 8 or 9 - attemperated to 10 during log phase and tweaked up by 1C every day or two (max 13-14) during Stationary phase to encourage them to clean up after themselves nicely.

For me its at least as much about what I have experienced too - too many lagers with krausen starting to show thick and strong before I have managed to drop the temp down to where I want it - diacetyl ridden puss that needed days at 14C to clean up. I want to start with about 1/8th to 1/16th of the amount of yeast I finish with (or 3-4 generations of growth) and that gets me the beers I am looking for. Well, usually anyway. If I start with less and try to compensate by having higher temps during lag and growth... its a bit of a crapshoot. Its what I do if for some reason I cant make a big enough starter to avoid having to.

But its yeast not electrons.. there is a hell of a lot of room to herd the wee beasties in different ways and still get a decent steak off the buggers.

TB

 

[Zwickel]

Edit: by the way, for the above fusel levels in mg. mg per what? Litre?

yeah, mg per litre

I store my yeast in 1 mL of 20 % glycerol broth at -20 degrees. I'm sure it's not as stable over long term (years) as -80 but, well, I can't keep them in my lab.

I tried freezing my yeast in glycerol... but didn't have a lot of luck. I think the somewhat dodgey domestic fridge/freezer might have played a part. I store mine on agar slants now.. which work very well when I remember to re-culture every 6months or so. I am trying desperately to cut down on the number of strains I use so the re-culturing isn't so much damn work.

the same here, once I tried that too, but was not successful. Now Im renewing my slants once the year and that works very well for me. I know, breweries and also the yeast bank says, dont exceed more than 3 month with your slants, but hey Im a homebrewer and I love my beers, so who cares.

beside science, forget about all that theoretical stuff:
some times, if I have not time enough to get the yeast going, but want to brew, I have to boost the yeast growth a little bit with higher temps of the starter and also pitch at little bit higher temp of the batch, later on I can recognize that beer by taste.
Also my wife, she is not really an expert in beers, but she will notice a "strange" flavor in the beer and that is certainly not diacetyl.

Cheers :icon_cheers:

 

[Fourstar]

Listen to the man, for he does not lie.

ED: hehe, I posted at 1056

FAIL! For this is a lager thread. :angry: Next time, post at 2124! :lol: