How many wyeast packs??

[timschram]

Brewing an imperial chocolate stout today. Using wyeast 1318 London ale III. At 70% efficiency, we are looking at an OG of 94-96.

While exchanging emails with a buddy, he left off with, "make sure you have enough yeast!" Now I can't get a hold of him. We have always only used one pack in our brews, but we have also never done anything imperial or with a gravity above 75.

Should we grab a second package of yeast??


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[DeBAD]

Run your recipe through MrMalty.com to verify how much yeast you need to pitch. Chances are the answer is going to be yes.


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[timschram]

Run your recipe through MrMalty.com to verify how much yeast you need to pitch. Chances are the answer is going to be yes.


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Mr malty says 3 packs. Does that sound right??


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[flars]

That could be right. A lot also depends upon the production date of the yeast. Older yeast means more packs because of the lower % of viability in each pack.

 

[Foosier]

yes. you need a lot of yeast to not stress out the yeast with that high of an OG. This is why most folks create starters. 1 pack and a little LME and you can get as much yeast as you need.

 

[timschram]

Thanks folks. I'll grab a couple more packs. The one I have was manufactured in March. We can't do starters at this time, unfortunately.


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[flars]

Checked Brewers Friend. Using the pitch rate of Pro Brewer 1.0 for high gravity ales, OG 1.096, and 5.5 gallon batch. BF says 8 packs of yeast based on a production date of about 30 days ago.

http://www.brewersfriend.com/yeast-pitch-rate-and-starter-calculator/

 

[JonM]

Grab some S-04. Cheaper, it has a higher cell count than a smack pack, and it is pretty similar to what you planned to use.

EDIT: Mr. Malty says 1.6 packs of dry yeast will do it.

 

[BigFloyd]

Grab some S-04. Cheaper, it has a higher cell count than a smack pack, and it is pretty similar to what you planned to use.

EDIT: Mr. Malty says 1.6 packs of dry yeast will do it.

This ^^^^^. Doing a higher grav batch and not being able to make starters means spending a wad of $$ on multiple vials/smackpacks of liquid yeast.

Rehydrate two 11g packets of S-04 dry yeast (Whitbread strain) and you'll have plenty of cells.