Preserves Online: Home Brewed Beer

Friday, 20 July 2012

Home Brewed Beer

Rehydration of dry brewing and winemaking yeast is recommended by every manufacturer of yeast. Placing a yeast directly into a wort or must will cause a significant loss in yeast viability by forcing the yeast to ingest unwanted, and sometimes harmful, substances such as hop acids and various other naturally occurring chemicals.
Rehydrate your yeast in a shallow glass pan or dish with about ¼ to ½ cups of warm (98°F to 104°F) water. It is best to boil the water and then let it cool in the pan or dish with a cover over it. A clean piece of aluminum foil will serve as a great temporary cover. The water temperature may be measured with a properly sized thermometer but using your wrist (like checking a baby's bottle temperature) will be of sufficient accuracy for any rehydration process.
It is best to sprinkle the yeast uniformly over the surface of the water to insure the least amount of clumping occurs. Clumping can cause the yeast to only partially rehydrate and result in damaged yeast cells and off flavored beverages.
Allow the yeast to rehydrate for about 10 minutes. After ten minutes the yeast should be gently stirred and added to a well aerated wort or must. Never aerate the must or wort after the yeast is added and never leave a yeast in the rehydration water more than fifteen minutes without adding some sort of yeast food (malt, sugar, starter mix, must, etc.) - yeast can starve after fifteen minutes without food.