Dry yeast starter??

Vallka

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Dry yeast starter just wanted to know if I should or if I even could make a yeast starter using dry yeast.
I have a couple of upcoming brew days, one I need to use some coopers ale dry yeast, the other will be a US-05 dry yeast.
( I built a stir plate last week and really want to use it !!!) :)
 
You don't need to make a starter for dry yeast but you should re-hydrate it before pitching.
 
yes yes. just rehydrate your US-05. I use distilled water, and add the yeast to at least 10 times its weight of distilled water. 11.5g packet of US-05 = at least 115grams of water at ~70ºF (or room temp). Let it sit for about 30 min, then give it a gentle stir, stir it every once in a while for 30 min. Ready to pitch.
 
Bonus: Rehydrated, a sachet of dried yeast contains about twice as many live yeast cells as a tube or smack-pack of liquid yeast. Dropping them directly into wort kills up to half of the cells, hence the "oversupply".
 
I've made starters with dry yeast:) for collection purposes only. Eg I spun up a 2lt starter used 34/70 lager yeast let it ferment decanted 500ml of starter into cleaned sanitizer jar for later use and pitched the rest into brew.
 
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For lagers, a starter seems to be helpful. I often pitch direct (rehydrated) on the first batch and save the trub for the next pitch and it's always a better fermentation all around with the second.
Ales do just fine with a direct pitch but definitely go faster and cleaner on the second.
 
Yep horses for courses i say;). Its just a process thing for me i make a starter for most my brews especially liquid yeasts as i dont wanna 11 bucks each time i brew for yeast.

And as you said JA some things just get better the more you use em like an old T shirt its just more comfortable.
 
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No starter for dry yeast? Twice as many cells as liquid?
As an example according to the manufacturers spec sheet Safale US-05 contains >6 B cells per gram
viable cells at packaging. One sachet has 11.5 gram, therefore >69 B cells. A liquid smack pack contains
!00 B cells at packaging. An average beer needs 200 B cells. Why no starter?
Propagating yeast on a stir plate takes up to 24 hours. Dry yeast can do that in 30 min by soaking?
I am fairly new to brewing and I would like to know what I am missing.
 
No starter for dry yeast? Twice as many cells as liquid?
As an example according to the manufacturers spec sheet Safale US-05 contains >6 B cells per gram
viable cells at packaging. One sachet has 11.5 gram, therefore >69 B cells. A liquid smack pack contains
!00 B cells at packaging. An average beer needs 200 B cells. Why no starter?
Propagating yeast on a stir plate takes up to 24 hours. Dry yeast can do that in 30 min by soaking?
I am fairly new to brewing and I would like to know what I am missing.
You are correct to question this. Cell counts with dry yeast are all over the place. It's likely that yeast counts are somewhere between 80 billion and 220 billion. It's seems to me that 80 billion is way to low, but 220 is a little high. Base upon my personal experience that an estimate of 180 biliion is fairly accurate.

Most of the time I do a starter with dry yeast and I think it performs better, but you hsve to treat it as a liquid if you do this. So the wort needs oxygen at pitching, 10-15 ppm. Lag times are shorter, yeast performance are better and beer is better with a starter.
 
Thanks for your response. A one liter starter would give you between 219 and 305 B cells when you start out with 80 to 220 B cells.
In my opinion not accurate enough . I was going to switch to dry yeast to eliminate a starter but I guess dry yeast gives you
a variable that you can't control.
 
I'd use the figure of about 140 billion cells for a package of dry yeast, seems to be about the best figure I can find for it. That's more than enough for most low to moderate gravity ales, at least if you rehydrate. If not, the number is about 60% that survive to ferment. I make a starter for most of my ales, mostly out of habit, and all of my lagers (assuming batch size of 6 gal). Two packets of dried yeast work fine, rehydrated, for my moderate strength lagers. If I do something really high gravity, I'll make a beer, say a Mild at around 4%, and repitch the yeast, using the beer as a large starter.
 

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