hydrate or sprinkle ?

[therebelmc]

Who does what regarding rehydrating or just sprinkling yeast? Cheers Mick

[smuggles]

I've always just sprinkled dried yeast, and I've not had a problem yet.

[therebelmc]

scuse my rudeness but i see you have recently joined the forum. how long have you been brewing?

[leedsbrew]

You should always rehydrate as per the manufacturers instructions (which can be found on their website for Danstar and Fermentis). The main reason for this (as I understand it) is that until the yeast is fully re hydrated the cell wall will not act as an efficient barrier for the cell and will let all sorts across the cell wall. This can lead to cell death. you want the cell wall to be intact and working appropriately when you pitch the yeast into the wort. If the concentration of sugars in the wort is too high as well the yeast cell can struggle to draw enough water across the cell membrane to rehydrate properly!

According to Jamil Zainasheff, and Chris White (of Whitelabs yeast) there can be up to 50% cell death when you dry sprinkle! As the dried 11g packets are sufficient to ferment 20-23L you can be effectively under pitching by dry sprinkling!

hope that helps. I was a dry sprinkler until I started reading into yeast. I didn't think there was any benefit to it until I started re hydrating appropriately and I have found that I have much healthier fermentations.

[Bribie]

I've been brewing for almost 3 years now, but my recent purchase of the "Yeast" book by Jamil and Chris is the biggest eye opener ever, and has prompted me to completely redesign my brewery and procedures. Like they say "brewers make wort, yeast make beer".
With regards to the hydrating, as leedsbrew says.

[smuggles]

scuse my rudeness but i see you have recently joined the forum. how long have you been brewing?

It's a fair question. I've been brewing about 5 months, so I'm still fairly new to it.

I've no doubt that leedsbrew is right, but like I said I haven't had any problems with sprinkling so far. The fermentation has always started the day after pitching, generally finishes about 3-4 days later, and is always around the target FG. Maybe I've just been lucky, or maybe I've been missing out on something I'd get from hydrated yeast. I'll have to try it and find out.

[therebelmc]

Cheers smuggles, post the results on this thread when you have tried it, be intersted to know the outcome . Mick

[boingy]

I've tried it both ways and honestly cannot see any difference in the fermentation performance or end result. I'm not arguing with the manufacturer's instructions, nor with the science of rehydrating but I really have not seen any difference. It still makes beer.

[raiderman]

I always rehydrate I didn't know the sciency stuff but worked on the basis that getting the little buggers up and running ought to be a good as opposed to a neutral or bad thing. I agree with boingy that I don't see much difference in practice, with one exception, occasionally in the past I've bunged a packet of yeast in and nothings happened, I've never had that problem with rehydrating.

[vacant]

Sometimes I used to sprinkle, sometimes rehydrate. I did a muntons kit a few years ago and the yeast did nothing when I rehydrated. Luckily I had a spare sachet. So after that I'd rehydrate just to check health. Prior to that I'd had just as good kit results with sprinkling.

[trucker5774]

I've tried it both ways and honestly cannot see any difference in the fermentation performance or end result. I'm not arguing with the manufacturer's instructions, nor with the science of rehydrating but I really have not seen any difference. It still makes beer.

Me too.............don't some packets actually "dry sprinkle" ?

[mat69]

i'm pretty sure so4 packet says sprinkle on wort i may be wrong ...

[HighHops]

Rehydrate. Be nice to the yeasties and they'll be nice to your beer.

[Naich]

For me, hydrating drastically reduces the time the yeast starts to get going. Sprinkled on wort, it would be at least 6 hours before the first bubbles appeared in the airlock. Rehydrated, it's less than 2 hours.

[JammyBStard]

I didn't think the yeast type and fermentation made much difference to the taste of the beer untill I started making some very pale ales recently and then it becomes pretty obvious that how your fermentation went makes all the difference. Especially temperature!
I always re-hydrate; like LB says above. There's no good reason to kill half your yeast cells just to skip a few mins of process.