Pitching rate / New Year / Neutron star brew??

[peterpiper]

Interesting thing about calculations for stronger brews ...
Was planning to to try (an Evil Dead Red clone) using LalBrew® Verdant IPA.
The first time I'd be trying this yeast, so checked the lallemand pitching rate calculator, with planned batch size 23l; OG 1056; temperature 20°C

Pitching rate calculator - Lallemand Brewing

The answer: Pitch rate: 5261723701.8 g/L (a little over 11 billion 11g packets are required)
Thats 5,261,723 kg/L
or: 5,261 kg/m3

That might be hard to manage. A neutron star is only around 1017 kg/m3, so if brewing on one you'd maybe need to reduce the OG a touch. Nice to imagine the beer though, and hope Lallemand calculator is correct.

Quite boring to get the real answer: 2 packets of 11g, when I entered OG as 1.056 instead.

 

[MashBag]

Nice. I too had had fun in excel but getting a pesky point in the wrong place.

I fitted a neutron star to the truck this year... sorry my mistake.... That is a fallen star. FFS the osram light bars are bright. About a million times the cheaper ones (yeah I know... is really that possible)

 

[Agentgonzo]

A neutron star is only around 1017 kg/m3

10^17 kg/m³. Slight difference

 

[peebee]

But "pin-a-tail-on-a-donkey" games with the decimal point aside ...

Two packs seem excessive? For 23L wouldn't one be enough?

Lallemand claim their calculator doesn't need cell counts and vitality calculations. Fair enough, liquid yeast calculators do vastly overestimate pitch rates (don't run a "smack-pack" through a calculator - it'll tell you it is short of cells to do the job! *** ). But dry yeast packs do decline so may only have half the live yeast cells at "expiry" date. (3 years from manufacture?). So, does this Lallemand calculator, which doesn't ask for "expiry" date, assume the pack is at "expiry date"?

I used that calculator (hence this rant), and it told me I need three packs. Under the circumstances that does seem right ... 45L batch and the two packs I have are at "expiry date" and perhaps I do need another. The calculator did not ask for the "expiry date"; doesn't need it?


*** A WYeast "Smack-Pack" has 100 billion active cells if brand-new ... a typical calculator (e.g. "Beersmith") will tell you that two packs are required for 5 US Gallons (18.9L) of a modest SG 1.040 ale/beer. How does that work???

The whole pitch-rate subject is so crackpot the beer may as well have the density of a neutron star.

 

[MashBag]

The whole pitch-rate subject is so crackpot the beer may as well have the density of a neutron star.

 

[peterpiper]

Results do make you wonder what the maths are based on.

 

[peebee]

Results do make you wonder what the maths are based on.

That's actually well known: The majority of these calculators use the work by Kai Troester (Brau Kaiser: http://braukaiser.com/blog/blog/author/kai/).

I use "Homebrew Dad" (available free from various sources) which is also based on Kai's work. It's handy because the spreadsheet using it is provided free and unprotected. It allows you to dig about in the workings. Kai's work is well packaged in this "Homebrew Dad", and it is surprising how little data from Kai's work is used. The bells and whistles of these Kai-inspired calculators are based on conjecture, not Kai's data. Especially all the multi-step starters.

The heavily modified version of "Homebrew Dad" I created attempts to undo some of the over-pitching typical in these calculators