Article by Dan Vallish

I have been successfully using Wyeast for nearly 20 years. There are a few things that may help you get the results you expect when using this pure brewing yeast.

Advanced planning: If you're going to brew, pop the "smack-pak" the night, or better yet, the day before your brew session. This gives your yeast a chance to "wake up". This also gives your yeast a chance to adjust to room temperatures. If you notice that the pack is not swelling, or is swelling only slightly, you may wish to postpone brewing for a day or so. If the yeast is off to a sluggish start in the pack...

On brew day, the pack should be swollen and stablized at room temperature. When you have brewed your beer, make sure the wort is within 10F degrees of the yeast temperature. Some have pulled the smack -pak out of the fridge, smacked it, and pitched it immediately into the 80F wort. Hmmm...

Please remember that the 100 Billion yeast cells are the proper pitching rate for a brew with less than a 1.060 starting gravity. If your brew is 60 or less, you're fine. The higher gravity brews will require a yeast starter or a second smack-pak to make sure your brew starts fermenting properly.

On 1-16-2011 we brewed an Irish Stout during one of our brewing classes. The kitchen temperature was 75F. The freshly brewed beer was 76F. We pitched the yeast at 5pm and we had good fermentation within 12 hours. The yeast was the London ESB #1968 and was almost 60 days old.

Cold temperature fermentation... I normally keep my ale (not lagers) around 70-75F until the fermentation begins, then I move the fermenter to a cooler place if I want to ferment at cooler temperatures to keep the esters low. This ensures the yeast gets off to a good start. If you find that your brew is not fermenting within a reasonable time, move it to a warmer location until it starts fermenting. At that point, you can move it to the cooler location and let the yeast continue fermenting your brew.





Wyeast is warranted by the manufacturer to have a 6 month self life. The Wyeast Product Warranty states that "we guarantee the viability of the yeast in our Activator� packages for 6 months from the manufacture date assuming that they have been properly shipped, stored and handled. Our superior packaging material provides 100% oxygen barrier and UV light protection making this exceptional guarantee possible. During this 6 month guaranteed shelf life, some loss of viability is to be expected. This will vary from one strain to another. Activator� packages that are 4 months old or older may require additional time to swell after activation.