I get that we all want/need to 'proof' our yeasts. It's just good technique to make sure that our yeast is viable.
What I don't understand is why there are these tables to determine how many cells of yeast you need to throw in your brew. Sure you don't want to throw in way too few because there's always the possibility that there's something else lurking in there that could get hold before your yeast do, but I just did a lot of reading at howtobrew.com and 99% of what he's got out there makes perfect sense except his yeast starters.
At one point it's stated to make a mini wort and get it going for a day or two beforehand to make the yeast nice and healthy before adding to your brew. Now, anything funky the yeast are going to do in the first two days is in that starter. The same starter you're going to dump into the fermenter.... Thus funky went in the fermenter too.
I've also seen people say "not enough yeast and they get stressed out". I can understand that "not enough vitamins/minerals they may get stressed out" but to this day I have never seen a fat man looking all stressed out at an all you can eat buffet.
Also, yeast reproduce soooo rapidly that by the end of fermentation you have been thru several generations of yeast. Several of the statements about yeast on howtobrew.com appear to make assumptions that all of the yeast are in the same stage of their life cycle (something I find extremely hard to believe - someone's going to need to give me a reference if you can actually manipulate that one).
I guess what I'm asking here is "how much of our yeast handling is superstition and how much is science."
It seems that most of these issues can be handled by an extra day in the fermenter (which is fine since we say "leave it til it's done" anyway.
What I don't understand is why there are these tables to determine how many cells of yeast you need to throw in your brew. Sure you don't want to throw in way too few because there's always the possibility that there's something else lurking in there that could get hold before your yeast do, but I just did a lot of reading at howtobrew.com and 99% of what he's got out there makes perfect sense except his yeast starters.
At one point it's stated to make a mini wort and get it going for a day or two beforehand to make the yeast nice and healthy before adding to your brew. Now, anything funky the yeast are going to do in the first two days is in that starter. The same starter you're going to dump into the fermenter.... Thus funky went in the fermenter too.
I've also seen people say "not enough yeast and they get stressed out". I can understand that "not enough vitamins/minerals they may get stressed out" but to this day I have never seen a fat man looking all stressed out at an all you can eat buffet.
Also, yeast reproduce soooo rapidly that by the end of fermentation you have been thru several generations of yeast. Several of the statements about yeast on howtobrew.com appear to make assumptions that all of the yeast are in the same stage of their life cycle (something I find extremely hard to believe - someone's going to need to give me a reference if you can actually manipulate that one).
I guess what I'm asking here is "how much of our yeast handling is superstition and how much is science."
It seems that most of these issues can be handled by an extra day in the fermenter (which is fine since we say "leave it til it's done" anyway.