Yeast question

[Tricounty]

Hello everyone,
I am very new here,
There seems to be more choices of kits available for 5 or 6 gallon size batches and I have read about brewing a 5 or 6 gallon batch and putting it in 2 Little Demon Conical fomenters.
My question is how do you divide up the yeast equally?

Thanks in advance

[Bluejaye]

Do you have a gram scale?

Otherwise, just use something like a 1/4 teaspoon and go back and forth between two fermenters until you've used up the pack.

Or hydrate the yeast in a cup of water, and then just pour half a cup in one and the rest in the other.

[RickBeer]

Most dry yeast packets are 11 or 11.5 grams. I use a gram scale, but before that I did it by sight. I take a coffee filter and rip it in half, and pour 1/2 the yeast onto one filter, then 1/2 on the other filter. Either by eyeball or by scale I adjust if needed, then pour it in.

There are lots of dry (and liquid yeasts). Brewdemon, and Mr. Beer, have an ale yeast, a wheat yeast, and usually recommend a lager yeast for a lager recipe (in a commercial packet).

You can always use a full 11 / 11.5 gram packet of yeast in a small batch of beer, but you're just wasting it. I always split dry yeast across two 2.5 gallon batches.

[mashani]

If you only have one pack and are splitting it, then do what they described above, and it will work fine as long as you follow normal ferment/condition/chill/drink times as are described on this forum.

But if you happen to have a spare pack, then I'll just say the idea of using both instead of splitting, IE "wasting it" as described is a matter of opinion, which I might have argued as such in the past but will no longer do based on experience.

IE, if you go by "pro brewer" pitch rates as found in:

http://www.brewersfriend.com/yeast-pitc ... alculator/

Then that 11g pack of yeast may be just about perfect for 2.5 to 3 gallons.

And I can attest that that kind of pitch rate has given me better beer faster. I've been pitching at Pro Brewer 0.75 for 1.05-1.06 ales and Pro Brewer 1.0 for 1.07-1.08 ales, and Pro Brewer 1.25 for ales bigger then that. And if I could force carb my beers I'd be drinking them just days after they were out of the fermenter. Even my bigger 8-10% beers. I can turn around those big beers in 7-10 days if I wanted to bottle that fast. Basically I can brew anything I want and turn it around as if I was brewing a mild or bitter if I want to. There is nothing that needs to "clean up". It comes out clean.

There is a lot of information on that link that explains the reasoning and I'm not going to argue with it because I can attest that I'm making better beer faster since switching.

So yeah, I pitch a lot of yeast. Most of the time at least. Exception being some wheat yeast where I want more banana because those pitch rates do suppress the banana.

[Tricounty]

WOW!
Thats a lot of info for a guy who just made his first home brew.

[HerbMeowing]

There are 4 teaspoons of yeast in an 11.5 gram sachet.

[Dawg LB Steve]

I would rehydrate in a measuring cup and split the slurry, less chance of contamination.

[Whamolagan]

What dawg says