Can you pitch more yeast in your homebrew?
Do you ever wonder what pitching more yeast in your beer could do? Would it fermenter faster, maybe cleaner, or nothing at all? We break it down in this episode of BrewTalk with Mr. Beer.
If you have been brewing with Mr. Beer for a while you will notice a few things. One of those things would be that the amount of yeast you pitch in a refill brew vs some of our recipes is different.
When brewing one of our refills you will pitch the packet under the lid which is about 5g of yeast. With most recipes, you will pitch a different packet of yeast which is about 15g.
Now the question is does this cause a difference in your finished result, and the answer is, well it depends but it can affect your beer in a positive way.
First off, we need to say that if you are holding your fermentation temperatures solid, and you are pitching at the proper temp, your sanitization is on point then adding the extra yeast might not have that big of an impact on your beer.
However, if you are getting off-flavors in your beer consistency and having trouble holding temperatures or not monitoring your pitching temperature then adding more yeast could help you.
Now you do not want to pitch more than 15g of yeast into one of our recipes, that is too much yeast and won't change anything with your brew. So if the brew you are doing already calls for 15g then stick with that.
With our refills and a few recipes, you are only pitching 5g of yeast. So if you always having a slight off-flavor, try pitching more yeast. You can do 2 or 3 of the Mr. Beer packets of yeast.
What this will do is if will put less stress on the yeast when it is eating up all those sugars in your beer. It will also help it clean up any off-flavors faster. So if you are always having a slight twang of off-flavor in your brew, then pitch more yeast in your 2-gallon batch.
Now just to reiterate you don’t want to pitch more than 15g in your Mr. Beer batch. If you are already making great beer with just the 5g packet then keep doing what you are doing.
This is only for those who keep getting a slight off-flavor and they just can't track it down, pitching more yeast can clean that up for you.
Cheers,
Robert