Starter / Split Us-05

[killspice]

So the general consensus is that creating a starter for dry yeast is a waste of time. It sounds like the cost in ldme and the loss of stored nutrients means you are better off just buying more packs. Looking at the numbers however, it does seem more cost effective to do a starter and split it as you would a wet yeast, but is there anything I am missing here.
It also seems to me that making and splitting a starter is better than reusing a yeast cake as the original yeast will be more pure.
Finally, since US 05 is the same strain as 1056/001 is there any point getting and splitting the wet yeast over getting a pack of US05 and splitting a starter?

 

[Wolfy]

The only other point in regard to making a starter from dry yeast, is that each time you handle yeast (any yeast, wet or dry), make a starter, brew with it or the like, you introduce the chance of contamination or mutation. In addition making a starter takes time, equipment and effort, so most people find it easier, more convenient and just as good to pitch more dry yeast directly (rehydrated as required).

If your sanitation techniques are good, making a starter should not be much different from brewing a batch of beer with direct-pitched yeast, it's just a little easier to control sanitation in smaller volumes, also repitching yeast from a batch of beer usually results in substantial more yeast cells than normal sized starters, so it's useful for larger volume or higher gravity beers.

The process of drying yeast is stressful on the yeast and some would argue changes the yeast's characteristics,there are probably minor differences with each strain as well, with the dry yeast selected for stability during the manufacturing process. The best way to test your theory is to brew a batch of beer and pitch half with US05 and half with Wy1056/WLP001 and see what differences - if any - you notice (other people have done the same in the past and come to their own conclusions).

 

[wombil]

I have played around with saving yeast,firstly because I am a bit lousy and secondly for the experience of doing it.Every time I have worried that I have stuffed up a good brew but so far I have had no troubles with keeping yeast or dropping a brew on an existing yeast cake .
Yeast is cheap,1056 (us-05) can be bought for $4.25 to do a 23 litre batch of ale.
Therefore I have come to the conclusion that the extra time ,work and worry saving yeast at the risk of spoiling a brew worth much more is not worth it when you can use a good fresh get up and go yeast so cheaply.
If it was a rare or expensive yeast then it may be sensible to save it but for the main economical ones the time and effort outweigh the benefits.
Just my ideas.

 

[TidalPete]

I have played around with saving yeast,firstly because I am a bit lousy and secondly for the experience of doing it.Every time I have worried that I have stuffed up a good brew but so far I have had no troubles with keeping yeast or dropping a brew on an existing yeast cake .
Yeast is cheap,1056 (us-05) can be bought for $4.25 to do a 23 litre batch of ale.
Therefore I have come to the conclusion that the extra time ,work and worry saving yeast at the risk of spoiling a brew worth much more is not worth it when you can use a good fresh get up and go yeast so cheaply.
If it was a rare or expensive yeast then it may be sensible to save it but for the main economical ones the time and effort outweigh the benefits.
Just my ideas.

I'm lousy too but hope Wolfy will agree with me when I say you worry too much?
Making sure you have good sterilising\sanitising practices makes yeast splitting\farming quite easy.
Agree with wolfy that every fermentation brings about small changes in the yeast & that's why it's best to play safe & never go past generation 4.
Dry yeasts IMHO can be farmed but because they are so cheap, hardly worth the trouble.
FWIW all my starters come from frozen worts of previous brews so no extra expense involved there.
My 2 cents.

 

[Wolfy]

I'm lousy too but hope Wolfy will agree with me when I say you worry too much?
...
Agree with wolfy that every fermentation brings about small changes in the yeast & that's why it's best to play safe & never go past generation 4.
...

If the previous batch of beer turned out well, I can't think of many reasons why well treated re-used yeast should cause the next batch to turn out worse, and many reasons to think it should turn out better.

Repitching yeast was (and still is) a very common practice in many commercial breweries, even the 'small changes' are essentially what has given us the many different varieties of yeast we have now days. That's not to say that home-mutated yeast will turn out well, but it's also not to say it will turn out badly either - most likely it will simply have slightly different characteristics to what was originally intended.

 

[killspice]

Damn, free Macca's wifi kicked me off as I replied :/ (killing time before starting a new job)

Anyway, thanks for all the responses, it sounds like there will be little difference between farming a yeast cake and splitting a starter so I might give the farming a go for a brew or two before starting on liquid yeasts. I am pretty confident of my sanitation practices so I should be fine in that regards.

I often jump between styles of ales and lagers, and do a ginger beer every 2-3 brews so I can't really re-pitch without odd flavours from the ginger beer, but farming and cleaning will hopefully do the job for me. I have an APA down now, so I'll probably farm the yeast from that and pitch it into a ginger beer (cheap) and see how we go.

 

[WildaYeast]

A couple of people came close to saying it, but I think it's worth emphasising that there is a definite potential benefit to repitching, as opposed to splitting.

The yeast actually get used to your environment. As TP says, too many generations is potentially risky, but the second and third batches can actually be "better" than the first, in terms of the yeast being happy, productive campers.

Unless you have good kettle screening (or are kit brewing), then I think it's worth washing the yeast cake to separate out the trub, so you shouldn't have too many issues with flavour transfer.

 

[Wolfy]

If you rinise your yeast-cake before reusing it, there should not be any off-flavours from the ginger beer (you'd be pitching about 1-200ml of clean water-washed slurry).