Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Homebrew Digest #5812 (March 22, 2011)

HOMEBREW Digest #5812 Tue 22 March 2011


FORUM ON BEER, HOMEBREWING, AND RELATED ISSUES
Digest Janitor: pbabcock at hbd.org


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Contents:
RE: Reusing yeast ("David Houseman")
RE: Reusing yeast ("Bill Pierce")


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Projected 2011 Budget $3271.04
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Date: Tue, 22 Mar 2011 07:19:33 -0400
From: "David Houseman" <david.houseman at verizon.net>
Subject: RE: Reusing yeast

Glyn,

Gee, you could easily get a book here from the HBD contributors. There's
been a lot of experience and history in reusing yeast. The one point I'll
make is what I do on a regular basis (not my culturing and storing yeast):
I'll brew a smaller beer, say a Bitter, one week. Primary fermentation will
be complete by the time I brew the following week. So then I will brew a
bigger beer, say a Barleywine, that will work with that yeast. I will rack
from the primary and leave the yeast bed in place and just knockout from my
kettle, through the chiller directly onto the yeast bed. Splash to aerate
only. LOTS of yeast for the Barleywine. The Bitter was essentially a 5
gallon yeast starter. This works for Helles to Bock, or Dry Stout to
Imperial Stout, Scottish Ale to Strong Scotch Ale, Belgian Pale Ale to
Belgian Strong Ale, etc.

Good luck,

David Houseman

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Date: Tue, 22 Mar 2011 10:48:49 -0400
From: "Bill Pierce" <BillPierce at aol.com>
Subject: RE: Reusing yeast

To add to the discussion about reusing yeast, I will add my procedure for
making yeast starters. As a believer in substantial pitching rates, I make
large starters for most of my beers. For a 10 gallon batch of my typical
ales with gravities above 1.050, I will step up a yeast smack pack or stored
yeast twice to a 1 gallon starter; for lagers and high gravity ales,
especially Belgian styles, I will make a 2 gallon or larger starter (I often
ferment them in a 3 gallon carboy).

These starters represent some effort and an expense in terms of the extract
used, so I have been hopping the larger starters to about 15 IBUs with
bittering hops only, and boiling them for 30 minutes. After they ferment
out, I crash cool the starters 24-48 hours before pitching, which usually
causes the yeast to flocculate nicely. Then while the wort is boiling I
will sanitize and fill two liter or 20 oz. plastic soda bottles with a
little priming sugar solution. I siphon the liquid portion of the starter
into these. That leaves mostly yeast sediment to pitch into my beer.

The resulting low gravity starter beer can be quite drinkable as a table
beer. For example, I call my Belgian starters "monk's ordinary," which are
quite popular for family drinking. Even lager starters, if I'm willing to
be patient enough to ferment them at lager temperature, become my own more
flavorful version of "lite" beer.

Brew on!

Bill Pierce
Cellar Door Homebrewery
Burlington, Ontario

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End of HOMEBREW Digest #5812, 03/22/11
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