Yeast Book By White And Jamil - Discussion Thread

[jimi]

Brewed up my first lager in ages so I decided to do a pukkah lager starter from a Wyeast smack pack. Guess what book I dragged out for the occasion.

Hi Bribie,
I haven't yet got the book, do you mind me asking what alterations the yeast book has inspired in your starters?

 

[Bribie G]

I bought the yeast book at the same time as I attended the Brisbane Conference a couple of years ago and also got some good expanded information from the lecture by the Whitelabs guy who was flown over for the day. Two best tips I got were:

With a starter you are looking for yeast multiplication, not fermentation. If you get a nice krausen on top of your starter, the yeast has stopped reproducing and started actively fermenting, so you've not achieved what you were looking for. That's why it's a good idea to keep your starter wort around 1040.

Don't be tempted to pour the whole thing into your brew as quickly as possible, let it use up the fermentables then drop out until you get a nice layer on the bottom, pour off the waste liquid then put the yeast in your brew. You don't want the waste liquid which, if you have made on LDME isn't going to do your brew any favours.

 

[Spiesy]

good book, I'm about 3/4 of the way through...

 

[Lecterfan]

I just thought I'd bump this thread.

I heartily endorse experimentation and trying this and that and the other etc etc. It's all good practice and what not, but at the end of the day there are some fairly basic 'suggested guidelines' (not rules) for making consistently good beer with controllable variables and relatively predictable outcomes.

This book has 304 or so pages, and even the most inexperienced home brewer should be able to look up the index and pull out some very basic information.

We make the wort, the yeast makes the beer. With some very rare exceptions, our lab-developed, homogenous, specific-condition/nutrient/temperature loving yeast won't often just spontaneously make us a decent beer with decent flavours and decent attenuation through good will alone.

Happy brewing to all.
:icon_chickcheers:

 

[warra48]

It's a good book with lots of very good information. I also found it a good read.

The only criticism I have is that it has almost nothing dealing with dry yeast. I guess that's predictable, seeing as one of the authors is the head of a liquid yeast producer.

 

[mje1980]

I think it's pretty good.

 

[Yob]

the freezing yeast section could also have been greatly expanded on... but yep, a great book and one I probably need to flick through again.