There are several choices for reducing costs with your yeast.  You can reuse the yeast cake, harvest your yeast, create multiple starters from a single liquid yeast pack, or use dry yeast.  Each of these choices can save you money, but there are also trade-offs.  Here are a few things to consider with each method.

Pitch your wort on your yeast cake

The first option is to rack your second beer on top of your yeast cake.  The idea is once your first beer has completely fermented; rack the beer leaving just the yeast behind.  Then pour your second beer over the yeast.  It’s like adding a very large starter to your wort.

The fermentation should go quicker the second time around.  You do need to be careful with this method because you are over pitching.  Autolysis (when the yeast cells die and degrade) usually happens when you leave your wort on the yeast too long (months), but it can happen much quicker when you over pitch.

You can crop yeast or pitch on top of your yeast cake to save money, but both methods come with risks.

Autolysis happens much quicker when you over pitch because your yeast is skipping over the aerobic phase of the yeast life cycle.  Fewer new cells are created and your fermentation will not be optimal.  You are creating a retirement community of yeast cells.  The yeast will not be as healthy and will die sooner.  Too much dead yeast creates a really nasty off flavor in your beer.

With that said I’ve added new wort onto yeast cakes and produced good beer.  Of course I did this a while ago before learning more about how yeast works, but you can do it.  In fact I didn’t come up with the idea myself; I heard it from another brewer (who probably heard it from someone else too).  Many home brewers add new wort onto their yeast cakes.  It saves you money, but it is risky.

• If you pitch on your yeast cake you are overpitching, which can lead to autolysis
• I’ve done it and it went fine

Become a yeast farmer and harvest your yeast

A better alternative is to properly harvest your yeast.  You should always harvest from the fermenter with the fewest generations.  If you are harvesting yeast for the first time this is not an issue, however, if you are continually harvesting you want the youngest yeast.

You also do not want to harvest yeast from beers with alcohol contents over 6.5% ABV.  The higher alcohol brews will stress your yeast.  These changes can have negative effects on future generations (darn you evolution), and produce off flavors in your beers.  It’s a good practice to use the yeast on similar beers, or go from light beers to dark beers.

Harvest your yeast after you have racked your beer from your fermenter.  Swirl the remaining liquid and yeast slurry.  Collect some of the slurry in a sanitized jar about half way.  If you are collecting your yeast from a conical fermenter, try to get the yeast in the middle.  The yeast at the bottom is likely to be dead yeast and trub (stuff that isn’t beer, water or yeast). You’ll get better quality yeast from the middle.

Then fill the rest with cold boiled water.  You want to boil the water you add and then cool it back to room temperature because you want to add sterilized water with no oxygen.  Boiling water lowers the amount of oxygen in solution, that’s why it’s important to shake your carboy before pitching your yeast.  In this case, the oxygen will cause the yeast to use up their glycogen reserves (energy reserve carbohydrate).

Let your jar of water and yeast sit for a few minutes.  During this time the trub should settle to the bottom.  Pour out the top part of the yeast solution into another sanitized jar leaving the trub.  Repeat this process until your yeast has a very light golden color, and very little trub is left at the bottom of the jar.

Close the jar and save your yeast in your refrigerator.  Do not keep the yeast for more than a few days (5 days max).  The sooner you use your harvested yeast, the better.  If it turns dark brown, discard the yeast.  When it’s brown, the yeast died.  If you open the jar, the yeast will smell awful.

Before you use your yeast, make sure it smells like yeast.  Smelling the yeast before using it is your best defense against ruining your beer with infected yeast.  If you pitch infected/bad yeast your beer will be ruined.

Wyeast recommends you pitch slightly more yeast, than you would from a first generation laboratory culture.  They state “the [harvested] culture can be void of sterols, enzymes, and glycogen, as well having possible poor cell membrane health”.

If you are not brewing beer once a week, you probably do not want to use the above two methods.  There is real risk of contamination, and you could ruin a few batches.  You have been warned.  Still there are other ways to save money on your yeast.

• Yeast harvesting is good if you frequently make beer
• If you pitch bad harvested yeast, your beer will be bad
• Keep your yeast cold and use your harvested yeast within 5 days
• Don’t harvest your beer from high alcohol brews

Create more starters from smaller batch

I usually brew at least 10 gallons of beer at a time, sometimes more.  My reasoning is the brewing process is just as difficult making 5 gallons as it is making 20 gallons.  The problem is you will need several vials or smack packs of liquid yeast.  This gets expensive quick.  At $8 a vial, I would be spending $32 on yeast alone.

Creating multiple starters and building them up might be another way you can save money

If you create multiple starters, you can make your one vial go a long way.  I’ve created several starters a few days before my brew day.  I just pour half of the yeast into each starter.  I’ll grow the yeast up until I have the correct amount of yeast for the size of the wort I am planning to brew.  This gives me the yeast I need for a healthy fermentation, but I only have to buy one vial of yeast.  The best part is it safer than the first two options.

• With a starter you will need fewer vials of yeast, but you can still pitch the proper amount
• Safer than harvesting yeast

Dry yeast is not your granddaddy’s yeast

You’ve heard the saying you get what you pay for.  This used to be true for dry yeast, but yeast manufacturers are getting much better at producing quality yeast.  In the past your dry yeast choices were ale or lager, and the yeast was susceptible to infection.  While dry yeasts still do not have the wide variety liquid yeasts have, the yeast quality is getting better.  The best part is dry yeast is significantly cheaper than liquid yeast.  You also might not need to create a starter, depending on the starting gravity of your beer.

There are also other benefits with dry yeast.  A dry yeast sachet can last up to two years in your refrigerator.  This makes buying in bulk another option for saving money, and you will always have yeast on hand.  A liquid yeast pack will last only for a few months.

If you are creating a beer where you do not need a specific strain of yeast, dry yeast is a good option.  The dry yeasts produce great results, especially if you want a neutral or absent yeast profile in your beer.  If you are looking for a specific flavor from your yeast, you’re still better off with liquid yeast.

Do not reuse the yeast from a dry yeast package.  According to Danstar, you can repitch the yeast slurry like any other yeast (up to 5 generations), but they suggest verifying the cleanliness of the yeast first with equipment which would not normally be available to the homebrewer.  This comment might be directed at professional breweries.  Fermentis does not recommend reusing the yeast since the risk of infection outweighs the cost of new yeast.  Since dry yeast is so cheap, I wouldn’t bother reusing the yeast.

• There are more dry yeast strains available, but not the number liquid yeast enjoys
• It may not be worth reusing, since it is easy to just buy another pack
• You can store dry yeast for up to two years

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1. Does your Belgian beer really need recultured yeast?
2. 6 questions to ask yourself before pitching your yeast
3. Should you put olive oil in your homebrew?

Your favorite bottle of Belgian brew has gone through quite a bit to get to your hands.  The beer was produced, bottle conditioned, sent over seas, stuck in a warehouse, put onto a truck, a stuck on a store shelf (for who knows how long) until you purchased it.  The yeast in the bottle are not going to be at their best.  I understand you want “authentic” Belgian ale, but there is another alternative.  The yeast you want is available commercially, fresh and viable.

Isn’t “fresh and healthy” better than “tortured, jetlagged, and left for dead”?  You can buy the same yeast used to make your bottle of Chimay in a fresh, healthy and much happier state.  Wyeast and White Labs have already done the work for you.  The best part is these yeast are happy and healthy!  Here’s the list of commercial yeast, and the Belgian or Trappist source.

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1. How to make a Chimay White Clone
2. Should you put olive oil in your homebrew?
3. How to make a Key Lime Wit beer

Why use olive oil in your homebrew?

Your yeast need oxygen for a happy and healthy fermentation. Yeast use oxygen during the lag phase to synthesize sterols and unsaturated fatty acids for its cell walls. If there is not enough oxygen, the yeast can not grow and die off early. Low oxygen leads to stalled fermentations and off-flavors. This is the reason you need to shake the carboy before pitching your yeast.

The problem is with too much oxygen your wort can become oxidized. An oxidized beer will taste like cardboard ass (or sherry but not in a good way). Any time you add oxygen to your beer, you run the risk of some oxidation. The olive oil solution is an attempt to avoid oxidation.

So why would you add olive oil? The idea behind olive oil is instead of giving the yeast oxygen to manufacture the unsaturated fatty acids, give the yeast an unsaturated fatty acid. Your wort doesn’t get oxidized and your yeast get what they need for their growth.

• Oxygen is used by yeast to synthesize sterols and unsaturated fatty acids for its cell walls
• Ale yeasts need about 5 parts oxygen per million in wort, while lagers can need 10 to 12 parts oxygen per million.
• Olive oil gives yeast the compounds synthesized for cell wall construction

You'll need barely a drop of olive oil in your starter

Where did this crazy idea come from?

Adding unsaturated fatty acids like linoleic acid to wort was attempted in several studies, but in 2005 Grady Hull, with the help of New Belgium Brewery, decided to try using olive oil. Olive oil was chosen because it is much more readily available and olive oil contains the same unsaturated fatty acid beer yeast produce. Linoleic acid is not naturally produced by yeast. It would seem olive oil was the perfect choice.

• The olive oil experiment was in a 2005 thesis by Grady Hull
• The experiment was conducted at New Belgium Brewery in Fort Collins, Colorado

How well did it work?

The experiment worked quite well for Grady Hull’s goals. The original goal was to compare the effects of adding olive oil to storage yeast vs. traditional wort aeration. They found they could achieve similar results in the final product using olive oil. The paper did note ester production was higher than the traditional aeration beer, but the additional esters were within production limits; in fact the flavor panel at New Belgium preferred the higher ester flavored beer. They also found the fermentation times were slower.

The New Belgian Brewery was also looking to increase shelf life for their beers. Less oxygen means they can keep their beers on the shelf longer. Hull reported increased flavor stability in the olive oil beer. Based on the goals set out by Hull, the experiment seemed to hit a home run for macro breweries, but the question everyone wanted to know still remains. How well would olive oil work on my homebrew? No one really knows yet.

• The olive oil beer produced more esters and took longer to ferment – both were still within accepted norms

How much olive oil do I use in my homebrew?

In the study, Hull added olive oil based on the total number of cells. He didn’t list actual volumes in the paper because there can be variations in yeast slurry thickness. In the first trial they added 1 mg of olive oil per 67 billion cells pitched into 360 hl of wort, and the final trial they added 1 mg per 25 billion cells pitched into 2100 hl of wort.

So how much olive oil is this on a homebrew scale? Going by their numbers you would need about 0.036 ml in your starter for a 5 gallon batch. In short, less than a drop. Probably not even that much. Most brewers adding olive oil in their homebrew are sticking a pin tip into olive oil and rinsing it into their wort. Even this small amount is likely too much if the numbers are correct.

The study’s authors added their olive oil to the yeast slurry about 5 hours before use. To do this at home, you need to add the olive oil to your yeast starter.

• Use the tip of a pin to get a small drop of olive oil
• Add the olive oil to your starter

Questions left unanswered

The first question I had after reading the thesis is: would this work for lagers? The study reported higher esters in each of their trials, but since they were making Belgian ale the esters were desired. In the case of a lager, you do not want increased ester production. This technique would be good for big beers or ales where esters are expected, but I have to question how well it will work in lagers.

Many homebrewers in brewing forums using this method and claim wild fermentations, wonderful beers, etc… but unfortunately this is anecdotal evidence. The study at New Belgian Brewery claimed their olive oil fermentations actually took 20% longer than normal fermentations. If this is accurate, your fermentation at home should be slower not faster. It would be interesting to devise an experiment to try at home to see how well this scales to homebrew breweries. If you’ve tried this before, let me know how well it worked for you in the comments below.

• Interesting idea, but it needs more experimentation for home use
• Increased esters might be bad for a lager

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1. 6 questions to ask yourself before pitching your yeast
2. Saving homebrew money with your yeast
3. Does your Belgian beer really need recultured yeast?

Like a horse after a long ride, you may find yourself racing to the finish line at the end of your brew day.  If you cross the finish line too soon, you may create more problems for yourself.  Here are six questions you should answer before pitching your yeast into the beer.

Is your wort cool enough for happy yeast?

Yeast does not respond well to higher temperatures.  The metabolism of yeast changes as the temperature changes.   If your wort is too hot, the yeast will be shocked and most likely will take a long time to start fermenting.  You can kill your yeast en masse if your temperature is not low enough.  If your temperature is not boiling but still well above the recommended temperature range, you may not kill the yeast but you will unnecessarily stress your yeast.  Stressed or shocked yeast can lead to bad flavors, and slowed or stalled fermentation.  Make sure your beer is within the recommended temperature range for the yeast you are using.

Boiling wort looks hypnotic, but it's a death pool for yeast. Make sure it's below 80 F (27 C) before pitching.

Does your wort have enough oxygen?

Like most organisms, yeast needs oxygen.  The oxygen is needed for cell-membrane components which are used in reproduction.  Unfortunately, hot wort contains little oxygen.  If you just cool your wort and pitch, your yeast may struggle.  Poor aeration can also cause higher than normal ester production in your beer.

Ale yeasts need about 5 parts oxygen per million in wort, while lagers can need 10 to 12 parts oxygen per million.  To make matters worse, the maximum dissolved oxygen you can achieve in your wort using air is around 8 parts oxygen per million.  Splashing your wort by rocking the carboy will help, but it most likely will not come close to the theoretical maximum.  White Labs states shaking will achieve about 10-30% of the needed oxygen levels.

You should aerate your wort for higher gravity brews.  The reason is higher gravity brews decrease the solubility of oxygen.  You would need to shake very hard to get enough oxygen into your high gravity wort

You can get an aeration stone from an aquarium shop or your local homebrew store.  There is some debate among homebrewers if you really need to use oxygen, or if air will suffice.  Personally I use air, and have had no problems.

Are you pitching the correct amount of yeast?

Long before pitching your yeast, you need to know how much yeast you need to pitch.  Homebrewers notoriously under pitch their yeast.  Commercial brewers pitch at least 10 million yeast cells per milliliter of wort.

According to Brewing Classic Styles by Jamil Zainasheff and John Palmer, you need to pitch 0.75 million yeast cells per milliliter of wort per degrees Plato.  Wyeast and White Labs recommend 1 to 2 million yeast cells per milliliter of wort per degree Plato if you are reusing your yeast.  This yields the following equation:

(0.75 million yeast cells) x (milliliters of wort) x (degrees Plato)

One degree Plato is about 1.004 of specific gravity, so to get degrees Plato divide the gravity of your wort by 4.  If your wort is 1.060, your degrees Plato would be 15°P.

You really need a yeast starter for most 5 gallon recipes

1 US gallon equals about 3785 ml, so a typical 5.5 gallon batch is about 20,817 ml.  If you enter these values into the above equation yields 234,196,875,000 yeast cells.  Your typical smack pack is 100 billion cells.  For a 1.060 beer, you need three smack packs to properly pitch.  Your best bet is to create a starter.

You can over pitch too, but that usually is a problem only when you pitch 400 billion cells in a typical 5 gallon batch.

Do you have enough nutrients for your wort?

Yeast needs three things to be happy: a happy temperature, oxygen, and nitrogen.  The nitrogen can be a bit nebulous for the homebrewer.  The best advice is to look at your ratio of grain to adjuncts.  Most of your nitrogen will come from your malt.  If you are using more than 25% non-barley adjuncts, you need to consider adding yeast nutrient.

What temperature are you fermenting at?

As I mentioned before, higher fermentation temperatures can have a negative impact on the flavor of your beer.  Higher temperatures can cause the yeast to produce a fruity flavor.  If your temperatures are too low, the yeast will be sluggish and take longer to ferment.  The longer the fermentation, the higher the possibility something else (like bacteria) can take hold in your beer.   Make sure that you can ferment your beer within the recommended temperature range.

What’s your starting specific gravity?

You should measure your starting gravity before you pitch your yeast.  You still have some chance to adjust your starting gravity before your yeast is pitched.  Ideally you want to know your starting gravity before you boil, but checking at the end of your boil is important.  The initial gravity will let you know how the boil affects your gravity (how much water is lost to evaporation).  This metric is also important to determine the attenuation of your yeast, and help you estimate how much alcohol is in your beer.

© 2008 – 2010, fermentarium. All rights reserved.

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1. Saving homebrew money with your yeast
2. Should you put olive oil in your homebrew?
3. Top 10 ways to improve your homebrew beer

While researching information for other articles, here are some interesting beer facts I’ve come across.  Many of these may surprise you!

Beer has fewer calories than many healthy drinks

Here’s a list of one ounce drinks and the number of calories in each.  We’re not claiming that 5 beers are healthier than 5 glasses of milk, but if you are counting calories, beer has fewer calories.

18 calories in one ounce milk
9 calories in one ounce bud light
21 calories in red wine
20 calories in white wine
15 calories in one ounce of Guinness
8 calories in one ounce of Amstel Light
15 calories in orange juice

Homebrewers pitch too little yeast

Brewers usually pitch 10 million yeast cells for every milliliter of wort.  To match commercial pitching rates, homebrewers should pitch 200-400 billion yeast cells.  A dry yeast packet typically contains 50 billion cells.  A liquid vial contains 70 to 140 billion cells.  The smack packs contain around 100 billion cells.  This means if you do not create a starter, you are under pitching.  Smack packs are not starters.  They activate the yeast metabolism, but they do not increase cell counts.

History of Pilsner and Budweiser

Pilsner and Budweiser origins come from the Czech Republic.  The pilsner style originated in the city of Pilsen in 1840, and is now known as Pilsner Urquell.  “Urquell” is the German word for “original source”.  Budweiser’s history is more suspect.

The Budweiser pilsner comes from the city of Budejovice.  Budweiser describes where the beer comes from, much like Bordeaux describes where in France the wine originates.  The beer has been brewed in Budejovice since the 14th century.  So how does Budweiser have rights to the copyright?  Anheuser-Busch was founded by German immigrants in 1876.  The Czech company Budejovicky Budvar was founded in 1895.

You have to admit the logos look very similar

Both companies claim the name Budweiser, and there are legal disputes to this day.  The United States has ruled in favor of Anheuser-Busch, and Budvar is sold under a different name.  In Switzerland and Germany, Anheuser-Busch must use a different name.  The United Kingdom recognizes that both companies can use Budweiser.  I asked about this on a Budweiser brewery tour in Fort Collins, Colorado.  The response was “I’m not familiar with that microbrew”.  Pilsner Urquel is the original source of pilsner, but it is still up for debate to the original source of Budweiser.

Hathor is the goddess of destruction and drunkenness

The Egyptian goddess Hathor/ Sekhmet goes my many titles (and names).  One is the goddess of destruction and drunkenness.  Her story goes like this.  The Sun god Ra wasn’t getting the love he needed from his subjects, so he sent Hathor to set them straight.  She took the job to extremes, turned into a leopard and started killing all the humans (where is SG-1 when you need them).  Ra, realizing that dead subjects don’t worship well, decided to stop Hathor.  He threw barley and dates into the blood that flowed through the streets.  It turned to beer and Hathor drank it up.  Hathor got drunk and became a much more fun loving god – the god of beer.  She’s also known as the god of fertility.  This is most likely because, as many women have found out, consuming too much alcohol can lead to pregnancy.

Egypt created the first no alcohol beer

The first non-alcoholic beer came from ancient Egypt.  A priestess would create a strong ale, then heat it over a fire.  The alcohol would burn off, and rise to make the goddess (Hathor?) very drunk.  The remaining beer, now non-alcoholic, was sold to the public (probably in France to soccer fans from other countries).

Bass Ale got the very first trademark

The distinctive triangle is the oldest trademark in Britain.  After the 1875 Trademarks Registration Act was passed a Bass employee was instructed to wait outside the patent office on New Year’s Eve.  If my boss told me to stand in line on New Year’s Eve, I know what my reaction would be.  The employee camped out at the office over night.  The new law went into effect January 1st, 1876 and the first two patents were awarded to Bass.

Breweries created the “pilgrims stopped for beer” myth

There is some debate to why the puritans settled in Plymouth .  While there is no debate that the puritans left England with plenty of beer, rumor had it that they stopped in Plymouth because they were out of beer and built a brewery.  There is no truth to this rumor, and the Mayflower probably had plenty of beer for the return trip to England.  The myth actually came from the American breweries shortly before and after prohibition.  Before prohibition, breweries (led by Budweiser) wanted to claim that beer was a part of American heritage.  They ran large ads in newspapers stating “Pilgrim fathers drank it”.  After prohibition, beer sales were down, so in an effort to increase sales the breweries ran ads creating the “pilgrims stopped for beer” myth.

The real prohibition repeal date in the United States is December 5

When was the 21st Amendment passed? (April 7, 1933 or December 5, 1933)

The Twenty First Amendment was passed by Congress February 20, 1933.  It was ratified December 5, 1933.  April 7, 1933 the federal government legalized 3.2% ABV beer.  Many confuse the two and celebrate the repeal of prohibition on April 7th.  While you could have purchased something that was technically beer, you could not get wine, full-strength beer, or spirits until December 5, 1933.

The real beer drinkers

The Czech Republic drinks more beer per capita than any other country.  For the past two years, China drinks more beer than any other country (350 million hectoliters).  China is the fastest growing beer market in the world.  The United States ranks number two by amount, but ranks 11 per capita.

The first beer cans

The first beer cans were produced in 1935.  Drinkers were no longer going to taverns, and breweries needed to get beer into the homes.  The smaller packages made it much easier to get beer home.  1939 ushered in a new era of beer on the go (and formaldehyde in beer).

Reinheitsgebot is missing an ingredient

The famous German Purity Law of 1516, “Reinheitsgebot”, is missing an essential ingredient for beer.  The original text decreed that beer can contain only water, barley and hops.  They did not understand the role of micro-organisms until the 1800s, so yeast was not a known ingredient.  Brewers knew to add a bit of the slurry from the previous batch, but did not know it contained yeast.  Yeast was added as an ingredient to the German law during the 20th century.  Reinheitsgebot remained in effect until the European Court of Justice repealed the law in May of 1987!

The first brewery in the United States

As I mentioned earlier, the pilgrims did not build a brewery when they landed in Plymouth in 1620.  Nicholas Varlett obtained from Peter Stuyvesant a patent for the first brewery in America on February 5, 1663 (it was a Monday for the incurably curious).  This brewery was on Castle Point in Hoboken, New Jersey.  The oldest active brewery is the D.G. Yuengling & Son brewery in Pottsville, Pennsylvania.  The Yuengling brewery was founded in 1829.

Hops are a recent addition to beer

The first reported use of hops in beer was 736 AD, but brewers didn’t really use hops until the 1500s.  Before the 1500s, gruit beer used ingredients like wormwood or other herbs to balance the sweetness.  Medieval brewers did not like hops in beer because they thought it caused “melancholy and tormenting disease.”  They also thought tomatoes were poisonous.

Beer is not just beer

Most people know that there are ales and there are lagers.  Ales are top-fermented beers, while lagers are bottom fermented beers.  Ales and lagers have many beer styles that taste very unique.  In the 2007 Great American Beer Festival, there were 76 distinct beer categories.  Each category represented a unique beer style.

Beer isn’t made in a day

It takes a while to make beer.  The quickest time from grain to glass can usually be accomplished in a week.  This short fermentation is possible in low gravity beers (low alcohol).  Budweiser’s fermentation and lagering process takes about a month.  The fastest reported time from grain to glass was at the F.X. Matt Brewery in Utica, New York.  F.X. Matt was the first brewer to get a brewing license after the repeal of prohibition, one hour after the law went into effect.  Defying the known laws of fermentation science, F.X. Matt delivered kegs of “fresh” lager 24 hours later.  This feat has never been “repeated”.

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