Cedar Rapids Brewing Society

I finished reading JZ's Yeast book yesterday. It's well written, easily approachable, and I recommend it to brewers of any level. Properly handling yeast & fermentations is one of the best ways to improve your beer. This book does a good job of covering everything you need to know about factors that drive fermentation character (pitching rates, oxygen, temperature, etc.) as well as topics like yeast starters, harvesting yeast, and long term storage. It even has a lengthy discussion of proper laboratory practices if you want to be a bit more scientific.

One point caught my eye yesterday as I was reading the trouble-shooting section: "Overpitching yeast will never result in over attenuation." Moderate underpitching can cause the FG to come in a few points high (e.g. 1.012 instead of 1.010), but pitching too much yeast will never drive the FG of your beer below its limit of attenuation. Nor will over-oxygenation or fermenting too hot. These factors only control ester production & fusel alcohol levels. The authors state that the best mechanism to control attenuation is grist composition. (Mash duration & temp are second and third order effects.)

When I reflected for a minute on that statement, it made good logical sense, but I had always believed that the FG of your beer is a function of how much yeast you have. If underpitching, pitching too hot, fermenting too cold, and poor oxygenation can cause underattenuation (as many of us know), then I assumed that pitching too much yeast, over oxygenating, or fermenting too hot could result in overattenuation. Turns out that isn't true.

So, if you're like me and routinely get 80%+ attenuation levels, it's not b/c you're pitching too much yeast.

I thoughly enjoyed this book. Geared towards the homebrewer with just enough technical information to be usable by the more advanced brewer. I would recommend it to anyone.

Glad to hear. I have been wanting to read that one. I follow the short instructions on yeast starters written by Jamil in Zymurgy years ago. Following his instructions on starters and fermentation improved my beer leaps and bounds.

I use the Dr. Lee Paulsen method for making starters.

brownbeard wrote:I use the Dr. Lee Paulsen method for making starters.

Which is....?

Cool. Which method would that be?

hoboscratch wrote:

brownbeard wrote:I use the Dr. Lee Paulsen method for making starters.

Which is....?

I sanitize a flask
get tap water flowing at my pitching temp
put enough tap water in my flask for the starter
throw in some DME, and shake the hell out of it
pitch some yeast and oxygenate.

Nothing like making a starter in less than 10 minutes.

it may be a variation on the more traditional method

you don't boil it? that's awesome. starters are a half hour process with boiling and chilling

hoboscratch wrote:you don't boil it? that's awesome. starters are a half hour process with boiling and chilling

I have not boiled my last 5 or 6 starters. Not chilling makes a huge difference.

I plan to start canning my remaing runoff after I am done with my regular sparge of higher gravity beers. Then I will just open up a mason jar of low gravity wort, dump in to a flask, pitch yeast and starter done. No more DME to buy for starters. The canning process will sterilize the wort as temps hit 250 F.

I once made a comment to my wife (who has a BS in Biology) about needing to boil tap water for making a yeast starter, but that you probably wouldn't need to boil bottled water. She proceeded to laugh at me for the next few minutes. She then explained what I said was ridiculous b/c municipal water departments are held to stricter bacteriological standards than bottled water companies. For the time being, I am trusting that my wife is smarter than I am and skipping that step.

Spending 30 minutes boiling and chilling my starter isn't a problem for me since I'm doing it a day or two before my brew day. The piece of mind I get is well worth the time spent.

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Matt F wrote:I plan to start canning my remaing runoff after I am done with my regular sparge of higher gravity beers. Then I will just open up a mason jar of low gravity wort, dump in to a flask, pitch yeast and starter done. No more DME to buy for starters. The canning process will sterilize the wort as temps hit 250 F.

I should do that. Seems like I am always out of DME. I have probably 10-12 canning jars too. Need to get a pressure cooker though.

I already have a pressure cooker for canning stuff at home so I figure might as well use it. I have run in to the same problem, needing to run to the store for some DME. DME is really expensive compared to wort I am running down the drain.

hoboscratch wrote:I should do that. Seems like I am always out of DME. I have probably 10-12 canning jars too. Need to get a pressure cooker though.

I have an extra couple laying around if you need one.