Re-Hydrate v Not..

[Pickaxe]

Thanks Ross.

 

[WarmBeer]

I also defer to brewers like carnie, bum, Ducati and others...

 

[Pickaxe]

All advice taken with agrain of salt, but to be honest, I've never been put too far wrong. My beer is tasting good and improving thanks to many on ahb.

Bit tired of all the bickering and petty bullshit oneupmanship crap.

 

[GalBrew]

From my POV there is no oneupmanship crap here, do whatever you want. I just get the shits when I see the same lazy advice constantly flogged off like it is the best and only way to go with no mention of its limitations.

 

[WarmBeer]

There are, or rather, were, many good brewers with years of experience, both professional and anecdotal, on this forum.

The three you named are not amongst that set of brewers, although I will give Bum credit for the occasional wisdom he bestows when he's not angrily tearing people a new one with his witty wordsmanship.

Edit: ... and I apologise to you for countering the sentiment of my very own signature.

 

[Pickaxe]

No need for apology. I'm taking advice where it is offered right now. Interesting there is a thread asking "who to listen to, who not to". I've got a lot to learn, and I'm interested in the info, I guess some of the older crew are getting sick of same noob questions.

limitations is a good point, and i kind of have blinkers on when it comes to "too far" with info or advice, but i will remember what people post when I get to that point in my own knowledge base.

I guess this thread is an excursion into best-practice Vs best-for-my-purposes.

Interesting what Ross put up though - coming from a professional - guess the debate remains divided on paper, but his point of enough yeast for the job is all I need right now.

Personally, I hydrate.

 

[WarmBeer]

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"

You lost credibility with the first post in this thread.

If the entire exercise was meant to be tongue in cheek, then my sarcasm filter is out of whack, and you're more than capable of holding your own in a rapier-wit sword fight with Bum any day of the week.

 

[Pickaxe]

I'd say Ducati had been "vindicated" by what ross posted.

I might add, bum, carnie and Ducati have helped me out.

 

[BeerNess]

Spiesy has the rights of it, best practices and best results.

Don't forget that killing half your yeast by dry pitching will still work BUT killing near 50% of your pitched amount means you're now drastically Underpitching.

Underpitching means stressed yeast, which then produce undesired byproducts, which in turn means a lower quality end product.

Each to their own, but it seems a shame to spend your time and effort creating something and then deliberately sabotage yourself at the start of the most important stage, and then promote it as being ok to others.

Personally I've noticed a big step up in beer quality since I started hydrating my dry yeast. Faster fermentation and better flavour profile. Then once I started temperature control as well hydrated yeast made and even bigger improvement under stable temps (compared to dry pitched & temp ctrl)

 

[pcmfisher]

Personally I've noticed a big step up in beer quality since I started hydrating my dry yeast. Faster fermentation and better flavour profile. Then once I started temperature control as well hydrated yeast made and even bigger improvement under stable temps (compared to dry pitched & temp ctrl)

Many have said there is no difference but is this the first person to say their beer is actually better when rehydrating?

 

[GalBrew]

Many have said there is no difference but is this the first person to say their beer is actually better when rehydrating?

I'd say many people were wise enough to keep away from this one. I failed miserably......

 

[BeerNess]

Many have said there is no difference but is this the first person to say their beer is actually better when rehydrating?

Yeah definite differences for me.

Before I was turned to the light (beer in its glory that is not megaswill) I was involved heavily in wine, training to be a sommelier and in wine clubs, blind tasting competitions and so on. So I have a fairly well developed palette, I know I pick up much more out of anything I smell or taste than my friends.

My main beer drinking mates taste no difference but a wine buddy and my dad who also has a good nose can pick it too. We often do blind triangle or line up tastings of my beers, commercial brews, comparisons between my clone attempts and the real things etc.

 

[Dengue]

Yeah definite differences for me.

Before I was turned to the light (beer in its glory that is not megaswill) I was involved heavily in wine, training to be a sommelier and in wine clubs, blind tasting competitions and so on. So I have a fairly well developed palette, I know I pick up much more out of anything I smell or taste than my friends.

My main beer drinking mates taste no difference but a wine buddy and my dad who also has a good nose can pick it too. We often do blind triangle or line up tastings of my beers, commercial brews, comparisons between my clone attempts and the real things etc.

are you saying you can taste the difference between a beer that has been pitched unhydrated vs one that has ?

if so, can you also detect the difference between a beer made with liquid yeast and one that has been made using rehydrated dry yeast ?

 

[slash22000]

The difference is between healthy yeast and stressed yeast, not "hydrated VS dry".

The problem is yeast health. Pitching dry kills half the yeast, which is drastically underpitching in many cases. 23 litres of standard 1.050 beer needs ~213 billion cells for ideal fermentation. One 11.5g dry yeast packet contains ~200 billion cells, but pitching dry kills half of them, so you're effectively only pitching ~100 billion or so, which puts a lot of stress on the surviving yeast, which can result in off-flavours being produced, stalled fermentations, who knows what else.

If you want to pitch double the recommend dosage to account for the dead yeast, that should work. Professional breweries who pitch dehydrated yeast would understand this and adjust their pitching rate accordingly, presumably they've crunched the numbers and figured it's easier/cheaper for their particular setup to just pitch more yeast than bother rehydrating it. But that is an entirely different scenario to a homebrewer pitching one dry packet of US-05 and claiming it's just as good as rehydrating first.

Whether pitching dry actually produces any detectable off-flavours, stalls the fermentation, or whatever, that's up to chance. What is NOT up for debate is the best way to guarantee healthy yeast, which is to always rehydrate first.

 

[BeerNess]

are you saying you can taste the difference between a beer that has been pitched unhydrated vs one that has ?

if so, can you also detect the difference between a beer made with liquid yeast and one that has been made using rehydrated dry yeast ?

Lol I can, when directly comparing them, pick the odd one out in a triangle test.

Have picked some different yeasts before too. Bry-97, US05 and Wyeast 1056 all seem the same to me. But comparing English and US yeasts is usually easier. I'm still learning what flavours mean what, can't just try one and say what it is. Need different samples to compare to spot changes.

To say I notice improvement is entirely subjective to what I like in beer. I did the comparisons on yeast with my APA using Galaxy and Cascade. So was looking for good hop presentation, clean malt, dry finish, etc.

To me dry pitching has a slight flavour muddle. Like hearing very light static on radio station that's slightly off station. If that makes sense.

 

[BeerNess]

are you saying you can taste the difference between a beer that has been pitched unhydrated vs one that has ?

if so, can you also detect the difference between a beer made with liquid yeast and one that has been made using rehydrated dry yeast ?

 

[BeerNess]

are you saying you can taste the difference between a beer that has been pitched unhydrated vs one that has ?

if so, can you also detect the difference between a beer made with liquid yeast and one that has been made using rehydrated dry yeast ?

 

[Feldon]

I think a very interesting point was raised in this debate which has not been followed up on is the survival of the fittest comment. Are the offspring of the 50% of surviving yeast (sprinkled gang) better in any way than the offspring of the (mollycoddled) hydrated yeast?

I think the survivors must be better. After all, they are alive while their weaker comrades are dead aren't they.

But the dead 'uns are not wasted. When they burst open by the uncontrolled ingress of wort their innards spill out and become nutrients for the surviving yeast to feed upon.

Natural selection + cannibalism = yeast master race.

 

[Florian]

I think the survivors must be better. After all, they are alive while their weaker comrades are dead aren't they.

But the dead 'uns are not wasted. When they burst open by the uncontrolled ingress of wort their innards spill out and become nutrients for the surviving yeast to feed upon.

Natural selection + cannibalism = yeast master race.

If what you say is true then dry pitching (close to double the 'normal' amount, mind you) would in fact be better then re-hydrating.

That'd be sort of funny in the context of this thread.

 

[Greg.L]

As for earlier posters inferring commercial brewers don't pitch unhydrated - RUBBISH. One of the most successful & highly respected craft breweries in the country, does just that, as do many others, equally many hydrate.

I can't imagine why you would dry pitch into commercial quantities of beer. How would you even get it to mix evenly? let alone the waste and the risk. You need a healthy vigorous population of yeast to establish quickly and reduce the chance of spoilage yeast getting established, that means rehydrating. This thread is about homebrew quantities, I can see arguments both ways, but with commercial quantities I can't see any arguments for dry pitching other than "Joe Blow does it and he makes good beer so it must be ok". Your highly respected craft brewer pal must be extremely lazy.