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@brouwerijchugach and I were discussing brett pitch rates, here's the convo:
@brouwerijchugach: I'm sure you already know, but I highly recommend making a larger
than lager brett starter for primary. I've had many beers that needed
to be blended down due to underpitched brett. In fact, my first brett
beers were an all brett B, all brett L and i just pitched the Wyeast
pack. Still have them in old, old kegs to see if they ever come
around. For science.
Me: Why would you need so much brett? Lambic doesn't get that kind of Brett
pitch. Does the acidity keep the brett-yness down? Or, what is it about
those all brett beers that is the problem?
Hopefully he'll respond here. This is a topic I'm very curious about.@brouwerijchugach: I'm sure you already know, but I highly recommend making a larger
than lager brett starter for primary. I've had many beers that needed
to be blended down due to underpitched brett. In fact, my first brett
beers were an all brett B, all brett L and i just pitched the Wyeast
pack. Still have them in old, old kegs to see if they ever come
around. For science.
Me: Why would you need so much brett? Lambic doesn't get that kind of Brett
pitch. Does the acidity keep the brett-yness down? Or, what is it about
those all brett beers that is the problem?
Posted 34 days ago.
Re: Lambic - My experience with brett secondaries is that you don't need as much as with primaries. A lambic pitch has sacc, brett, lacto, so the brett is almost treated like a secondary in the fact that by the time it starts to work sach has done most the primary fermentation. (sacc doubles 2-7x as fast as brett)
Re: Brett Starters - With regard to primary, I step up because the brett that is sold is much less than the cell count of a sacc smack pack. Brett grows slower, so letting it get going first is helpful. Even more if its a white labs tube, they have even less.
I'm not saying the pitch rate needs to necessarily be different (and lately, who knows what the pitch rate "needs" to be) but that since you are given so little yeast to start with, its good to grow it up - and the fact that it takes so long to grow (a full starter can take 7-8 days instead of 24 hours.) Bottom line for me with a brett primary - I'd rather overpitch than underpitch. Under, to me, tastes too... off. I think the Yeast Bay testers (Marshall, Ed, and I) all got a whiff of this with our Brett beta tests. I don't think we used large enough starters (however I did not do a cell count.) Cell counting is something I plan on doing more of once the move is done.
Yakobson say he just treats his like Ale yeast - however he has control over how much brett he "starts with" before making a starter and pitching or whatever technique he uses.
Posted 34 days ago.
OK, that makes sense. I use it like Ale yeast as well, or at least, I try as best I can to treat it like Ale yeast, because like you, I'm not counting cells. Just lager pitching is double ale pitching, so it's a ton more yeast, and as you say, growing that much takes time.
If I'm reading Chad's growth curves right though, 48 hours or so is about the same amount of growth as you would get with sacch, but not it's full growth potential, due to the two stage growth.Posted 34 days ago.
Here is something interesting for you guys: the online yeast pitching calculators do not accurate estimate cell counts for Brett. Brett has a much higher max cell density - 600-800 million cells per mL, where as Sacch is in the 200 million cells per mL range. Calculators like Mr. Malty and Kai's calculator use the fact that Sacch has a max density of around 200 million cells per mL. So, unless people are counting cells under the microscope, if they are using an online yeast calculator they've been pitching 4-5 times the number of cells that they would be for a lager yeast!
This information was originally brought to my attention by Mark Trent and Lance Shaner on MTF, and was reviewed by Nick Impellitteri from The Yeast Bay. I documented it on the MTF wiki here: http://www.milkthefunk.com/wiki/Brettanomyces#Starter_Information
That all said, if pitching 4-5 times the lager pitching rate is working, which it appears to be, keep doing it! We just don't know how many cells we are actually pitching until a better calculator comes out. To make things more complicated, the max cell density of Brett ranges depending on the species and strain. But guess, what... so does S. cerevisiae!
Posted 34 days ago.
That's pretty interesting stuff. I knew that S. cerevisiae cell density varied - I note that on our yeast starter calculator - and assume that brett did, too... but I had no idea that brett was *that* much different.
Posted 34 days ago.
Lance Shaner is working on a yeast pitching rate calculator that will be accurate for many strains of Brett and Sacch. That will be interesting to see.
Posted 34 days ago.
I will be interested to see it!
Posted 34 days ago.
So, I'm not sure I understand this correctly.
If I get a white labs vial and assume it has 3 billion cells in it and I step that up in half a liter to 75 billion cells according to the calculator on this site. Then I take that 75 bil cells and step that up in 1 liter to 215 bil cells. Then I'm not pitching inaccurately right (aside from growth rate differences)?
Only if I think I have a slurry of a particular volume would I be growing and pitching inaccurately?
Or is the growth rate dependent on the cell density and I'm all confused.
I mean, I know that even using the calcs that I'm just pitching a guess, but I'm trying to figure out what I'm missing in wrapping my head around this.
Posted 34 days ago.
Yeah, I'd like to know more. I could easily see making version 2.0 of our calc, to allow people to select brett from a dropdown (or maybe feed in a custom growth rate, like we do with custom viability %).
Posted 34 days ago.
Oooohhh...custom growth rate would be awesome. Could that be taken from thebrettanomycesproject data that's already out there?
Posted 34 days ago.
Well, I mean, right now, I'm assuming a few items, which are loaded into variables. It wouldn't be a huge leap to give input boxes that default to these, but allow the user to override.
Say, you know that strain X is denser, grows better, whatever.
Posted 34 days ago.
It's not so much of a problem of growth rate as it is a problem with the yeast maxing out the number of cells. With a given specific gravity and volume of wort (I believe 1.040 SG is what the calculators might be based on), a given strain of Sacch can only produce X amount of cells, then it will quit reproducing. Kai's calculator assumes that all yeasts will max out at 160 million cells per mL of 1.040 wort, and Jamil's is around there too. The problem is that the max isn't static across all strains (as Dad mentioned), and it's hugely different in Brett. In other words, Brett reproduces 4-5 times the number of cells that Sacch can with the same amount of food.
Posted 34 days ago.
Edited 34 days ago by DanABA
The variation in sacc is no big deal. But if Brett is that far off...
Yep. I can see some coming edits!
Posted 34 days ago.
How does cell density max out. Is there a population sensing mechanism that's different for each species. spp., and/or strain?
One of the obvious things that White Labs rep noted was that 35 mm of slurry has different cell numbers because the flocculation character affects packing (cell density). And Chris White was quoted on some podcast I heard saying that you get way less cells of WLP002 than WLP001 because the cell size of WLP200 is so big, notwithstanding the floccing. I'd love to go onto Yeastman sometime with batch numbers for 001 and 002 and see what's what. Alas, I don't have an account.
Posted 34 days ago.
Yeah, "biomass" is something completely different, from what I understand. Some strains have larger cells than others. As far as "cell density" goes, here we are talking about the number of cells in a given volume, not the size of the cells themselves. Cells need sugar to divide, and if those sugars aren't available they will stop dividing. Simple as that.
Posted 34 days ago.
