Counting Wyeast 1968 - anyone bother?

[woohokie]

Here's the issue. Small 7bbl operation - I initially wanted to use wyeast 1968 London ESB for most of our beers, including our golden session ale and hoppy beers - DIPA, IPA etc just to add a nice ester profile and stand out from all the cal ale based beers. As we started using the strain we fought some attenuation issues with it (mostly due to a mash temp probe that's now been sorted out), and thus went to cal ale for it's no nonsense fermentation and awesome hoppy beer ability. I'd like to go back to using the 1968 strain as I know it can make great hoppy beer, and also importantly, I'd like to stop purchasing cal ale for beers other than our "flagship", which we have to use for that beer anyway.

We are set up for cell counts, but the SOP for them is based (as I'm sure most are) on a homogenous slurry sample, which with 1968 I cannot make happen without something like EDTA. However, if I base my slurry density off an EDTA'd sample, then it doesn't seem like it would then correlate to the non homogenous slurry still sitting in my yeast keg... Make sense?

I've tried pitching based on estimating that the slurry has 1bil cells/ml but sensory evaluation of the resulting beer tells me I grossly over pitched, which makes sense because the density of the slurry appears to be peanut butter, and probably closer to 2 bil cells/ml.

To those that use this yeast often and repitch, especially for hoppy beers, how are you estimating or counting etc. this stuff?

[woohokie]

How high is the calcium content in your brewing water, especially after any calcium mineral additions? The higher the calcium content of the water, the more the yeast flocculates and clumps. Reducing the calcium content in the brewing liquor may be something that you want to do for your brewing anyhow. The need for calcium in brewing water is far overstated.

Our water untreated is near 35-50ppm depending on the source from the City. I use (yours I believe) a spreadsheet to bring up the finished beer to 100ppm with small additions of gyspum and calcl (80g each or so usually for 8bbls) to the mash and kettle while using 85% phos. acid to bring the mash ph to 5.3-5.4 at room temp.

I could certainly reduce those, but this yeast will clump like peanut butter no matter what you do to it from what I've seen.

[a10t2]

That's been my experience as well. I can't see how the EDTA would throw off your cell counts. The whole point of using it is that when working with a small sample, one little yeast floc included or excluded makes a significant difference in the count. That isn't an issue when scaling up to the full pitch.

[CharlosCarlies]

That's been my experience as well. I can't see how the EDTA would throw off your cell counts. The whole point of using it is that when working with a small sample, one little yeast floc included or excluded makes a significant difference in the count. That isn't an issue when scaling up to the full pitch.

Agree w/ this.

[WoodlandBrew]

Counting highly flocculant yeast such as 1968 can be troublesome. If the EDTA is accounted for in the dilutions then the cell count should be accurate. I've found that using the deflocculant as the first dilution is helpful in improving accuracy. If you aren't preforming viability staining then Acetic Acid works well to separate the cells into a homogenous suspension. (The acid will suck the dye right out of the cells giving a poor assessment of viability) I'll normal do a 1:1 dilution with common white vinegar if I only am interested in the cell count. If you do use white vinegar then keep in mind that you may see acetobactor or other contamination unusual to a health yeast slurry that was part of the vinegar making processes so don't be alarmed.

Another way to get a good cell count with highly flocculant yeast is to use an optical cell density meter. We happen to be developing one designed specifically for brewers: http://www.woodlandbrew.com/2014/07/...ity-meter.html

[timroberts]

I've used this strain for over 12 years at two different breweries, and I'd say the most important thing to remember when using it is to give it A LOT of O2. You may need to look at your wort aeration setup. We use O2, and hit way over 8ppm in our wort. It's always a very dense slurry, but it really starts to go peanut butter when it's starved of O2. Just this might help you get a better cell count, but we've gotten counts very consistently at 90% solids, which in my experience tells you what you need to know. We pitch a bit over a pound per BBL for even 11P wort, and for our 17.5 IPA, we pitch 2.5/lbs. While I'm on the subject, I'll also say that we use this yeast specifically because it's not a great attenuator, and of course for the flavor. But for said IPA, for example, which considering the gravity and style, it resulted in a too-sweet profile. We corrected that issue by using 100% invert syrup, which comprises about 5% of the extract, resulting in a clean and not sweet beer. These are my two main tips for using the Fullers strain. Good luck!