Under Pitching. I've just realised.

[Damn]

How important is it to get pitch rate right? I'm just starting my 3rd year of my apprenticeship into home brewing. I mostly make Pales & IPA's The last 7-8 brews I've used whitelabs liquid yeasts. I've found my beer to be not as good as when I was using 15g packs of US-05. So I thought I may go back to the dried yeast. But on reading some, contrary to HBS & the yeast instructions (which i only skimmed over) its apparent I need to make a starter. Most of my beers are 1.050 - 1.065 but the most recent one I've made with Abbey Ale (WLP530) is 1.070. I just tipped the tube straight into the wort as agreed by HBS. Have I screwed this beer? Been fermenting now for 7 days. Anything else I can do to that brew?
I'm taking this as a valuable lesson learnt and will look into getting a stir plate and making starters for bigger beers.

 

[professional_drunk]

My biggest advances in brewing have all revolved around yeast handling: temp control, pitch rate, aeration.

In comparison going from biab to braumeister didn't really do much.

 

[Forever Wort]

As I understand and in my experience underpitching won't affect the ultimate attenuation of the yeast, but it will affect flavour and fermentation duration. Your beer should be fine, take tasting notes and compare for the future.

 

[Judanero]

Have you been using any software to calculate your pitching rates? Eg MrMalty

Correct pitching rates certainly helps improve beer quality, as does adequate aeration, temp control etc as noted above.

 

[Truman42]

As you can see from the attached screenshot of Mr malty if you are brewing 20 litres of a 1.065 Ale and you use liquid yeast that was packaged a month ago, then your going to need 3.2 vials of liquid yeast.

More if it is even older, so yes you need to make starters or pitch extra vials. And start using Mr malty or yeast calc.

http://www.mrmalty.com/calc/calc.html

http://www.yeastcalc.co/homebrew-calculators





If you use dry yeast you can see in this screenshot that 1 x 15 gram pack is sufficient.

 

[beercus]

Is it detrimental to overpitch?

sorry to hijack!

beercus

 

[Damn]

Thanks, Looked at MrMalty. Wanted to add 2-3 vials of yeast. Starting to get costly. Wouldn't stepping up a starter achieve the same result? Lots to learn....

 

[mosto]

Is it detrimental to overpitch?

sorry to hijack!

beercus

Only to the point that you won't get the yeast contributing much flavour. If using a yeast that is relatively neutral flavour wise, like US05, than it's not a massive issue. But if using a yeast that you want to contribute a lot of flavour, such as a hefe strain, you want to make it work a little so it throws the flavours you're after. If you overpitch there's plenty of cells to do the work so they don't work as hard.

Thanks, Looked at MrMalty. Wanted to add 2-3 vials of yeast. Starting to get costly. Wouldn't stepping up a starter achieve the same result? Lots to learn....

Correct. That's why a lot of people make starters, to increase the cell count to the correct pitch rate. Fermentation also kicks off quicker when using yeast that's been recently active.

 

[TheWiggman]

I strongly recommend you look into making starters. Plenty of info out there, but at the very least you need -

• A 1.5l bottle (soft drink PET bottle would be fine)
• 100g of light dry malt

That's it.
A 1l starter from a single Wyeast or Whitelabs pack is all you need for most ales and as per above, will maximise your chances of a good beer. When you get the hand of it there's no need for multiple packs for high gravity or lagers.

Then you will become a little obsessed with it and before you know it you'll have an Erlenmeyer flask, stir plate and will be storing yeast for future brews. In the end liquid yeasts can be more cost effective than dry.

Plus you don't need to rehydrate starters h34r:

 

[Spiesy]

A stir plate and Erlenmeyer flask should be every brewers best friend (unless you're happy sticking with dried yeast).

Saves you a lot of money in the yeast department, and gives you every chance to hit correct pitching rates.

You can even buy discounted, out of date yeast, and get it to where it needs to be.

Also, I don't believe you made mention of the date of your White Labs yeast?
This will be a MASSIVE factor in how much yeast you are actually pitching.