S-189 Pitching Rate

[technobabble66]

Haha. I stand corrected. I checked their site yday and didn't see it [emoji52]

 

[Tahoose]

*double post

 

[Tahoose]

They do sell them in individual packs. I enquired with grain and grape and asked if anybody else had requested it and they said no, and didn't intend to stock it.

Pretty sure full pint stock it sometimes.

 

[technobabble66]

^^ Maybe no-one asks for it because they're used to no-one (well, very few) supplying it. Or they simply become familiar with whatever the LHBS normally supplies.

This is obviously a minor beef i have. It seems the most obvious yeast strain for Aussie HB'ers to be using, and 10 times more likely to produce something good for the newbie brewers who launch straight in to trying to brew a lager before they know what they're doing, etc.
I just don't understand why everyone basically stocks the other types of dry lager strains in preference.


Good to know FP might occasionally stock it. I'll get onto hassling Cocko.

 

[LAGERFRENZY]

Not a minor beef but I can understand smaller LHBS not wanting to get stuck with $200+ 500 gram packs of yeast that have a limited shelf life. Your earlier question as to why Ferments does not distribute this yeast in single packs here is the one that I can't think of an answer for.

 

[Goose]

It is available in 11.5g individual packs (see below) and I always prefer to buy this way rather than a retailer's repackaged product from the 500g packs for obvious reasons. This should be available to any retailer who orders in Fermentis products though as mentioned above I suspect many are trying to clear existing stocks of repackaged stuff before stocking this.

 

[Goose]

Your 44ltrs, have you brewed it all ready and no chilled? Or are you going to brew it?

Did a big batch of lager using this yeast recently. First 20ltrs was with 30 grams yeast re-hydrated. Fully ferment out and then used the whole yeast cake for the next 50litres, pitched low and free rise up to 17c.

G'gay Mr Hoose. Yes I brewed this already but I did a two stage starter as per calcs in OP and pitched at 15 deg C. To make the starter, this time I used a fermentis original and not the prepackaged yeast, just to eliminate any possibility that contamination occurs in the repackaging process.

As mentioned I had tried before pitching 4 x 12g packs directly into 18 deg C wort then cooling to 12 for ferment. I also tried the rehydration method. Both gave me the same undesirable results for the first batch.

It seems clear to me I was underpitching and I blame my blind faith in the Mr Malty calculator for dry yeast pitching. I was therefore looking for every reason other than underpitching to determine the cause of the problem.

The mr Malty calculator assumes around 20 Billlion viable cells per g of dried yeast for a well treated product. Yet the manufacturer will only guarantee a minimum of 6 B/g from factory, and experimental results (see OP) came up with only 8 B/g. My bad for not doing my research.

However I am not out of the woods till I can claim success with current batch which is a week in and down to 1.025 at 12 deg c so far.

 

[kaiserben]

Thanks KBen.

I'd be interested to learn how your beer turns out because 2 x packs at 6 B per g is only 138 B cells and I believe for 22 l of wort at 1.05 you should be pitching at a rate of around 400 B cells putting you alot short.

Or is this your normal practice and it turns out fine ?

Just tasted it and it turned out spectacularly well. (Fairly clean without noticeable fruity esters, unlike the side-by-side I had done with S-23 after splitting the batch).

I was fairly patient with it; I let it spend a couple of months in bottles in the household fridge before tasting.

I'm now an S-189 convert, but still, I'd probably pitch more cells next time considering your info in this thread.