Home Distiller

in the birdwatcher sugar recipe it says to use 18Kg sugar, 80L water, 225g yeast, plus tomatoe paste,
that works out to be 12.5g yeast per Kg sugar, 2.81g yeast per L water,
2.81g per L water = 12.645g per gallon water,
and after trying it this works great,

but

what i have read:
-if alcohol is in the 5% or less range use 2 g per gallon,
-if alcohol is in the 5 to 7% range use 3 g per gallon,
-if alcohol is in the 8 to 10% range use 4 g per gallon,

this match's up with my old recipe passed down from the old boy, which is 4 g per gallon,
this also works grerat,

it is said that higher than 4 grams per gallon will get you some sulfur flavors,

so why is the birdwatcher sugar recipe over 4 times the recommended amount of yeast, and why does it work?
what would happen if you ran the birdwatcher recipe at the rate of 4 g per gallon instead of 12.645 g per gallon?
are my numbers off? why all the extra yeast?

I have run this several times but with out adding the Epsom salt.

I heated up the water and in another pot the back set from running a wash.

Mixed the tomato paste, lemon juice, salt in about a gallon of hot water, added
the rest of the hot water. Added enough cool water to bring the temp down to 106 range
and up to 6.5 gallons.

Tossed 2.5 oz of dry bakers yeast on top and stirred it in.

In less than a minute it started to burp - this can't be I thought to myself.

In 20 minutes both tubs were going like machine guns

3 days later they are still going pretty hard. I have never pitched this much yeast at most maybe an ounce.

Hope it comes out taste wise - we shall see

Coyote

Retlaw, I agrees with your observations here. In fact, with the majority of my ferments I am using only 4-6 gm/5-6 gal (that's for active dry yeast) of wort and my ferments do just fine. Excessive use of yeast (over-pitching) can result in high levels of diacetyl and acetaldehyde, low attenuation, yeast autolysis flavors, and ya don't get any extra ethanol, besides being a waste of yeast, hence, money. Nevertheless, there are recipes that call for huge amounts of yeast.

Big R

Large pitch rates of cheap yeast simply reduces lag time... For neutral spirits this usually doesn't present problems...

rad14701 wrote:Large pitch rates of cheap yeast simply reduces lag time... For neutral spirits this usually doesn't present problems...

because the neutrals are stripped so much? where as whiskey/rum/scotch are not?

should birdwatcher pitched with 1/4 the yeast produce the same volume? (of course it would take longer)

retlaw wrote:

rad14701 wrote:Large pitch rates of cheap yeast simply reduces lag time... For neutral spirits this usually doesn't present problems...

because the neutrals are stripped so much? where as whiskey/rum/scotch are not?

should birdwatcher pitched with 1/4 the yeast produce the same volume? (of course it would take longer)

Correct, and Yes...

thanks rad,
good to know,