Cedar Rapids Brewing Society

I haven't been happy with the lag times I've been getting with rehydrated dry yeast (typically 12+ hrs), so today I made a small starter and added the rehydrated dry yeast to it. I made the starter during the middle of the mash and it was very active when pitched. Despite pitching at 62F, the lag time to first seeing bubbles from the blow-off tubing was less than two hours.

Up to this point, I had only seen two schools of thought on dry yeast. One says to just pitch directly into wort, while the other says to rehydrate in warm water (sometimes with Go-Ferm) and then pitch. So far, at least, I would argue that making a small starter to get the yeast going before pitching is an effective alternate approach to reduce lag time.

I'll report back in a few weeks. Hopefully this approach improves other fermentation characteristics, since lag time doesn't always correlate with clean, complete fermentations.

The first time I used dry yeast (rehydrated) in a batch, there was a huge lag time and the rye pale ale was a butter bomb. I am pro starter in most cases.

We make starters with dry yeast when we make bread to wake up our little friends. I don't see why there's any reason not to do the same when making beer.

I've read about osmotic pressure issues killing dry yeast cells being pitched into starter wort. I just can't believe the hype when millions of people rehydrate freeze dried yeast daily in tap water with sugar to make bread.