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Reliable Pitch Rate for Reliable Fermentation
Category : General
Date : February 13, 2023
Author : White Labs
The Next Generation
The Next Generation of PurePitch® is finally here with key advancements to make your brew day easier. One of the most important is that PurePitch® is NOW AT 2X THE PITCH!
What About Those Pitch Rates
In our decades of research and working with brewing partners, we know that having a precise pitching rate is the key to a successful fermentation for the best beer every time. With PurePitch® Next Generation, we have standardized the cell concentration and created a simple, modular design to give you the optimal pitching rate.
Our recommendation of pitching a consistent 7.5 million cells/mL is a commercially recommended pitching rate for standard ale ranges.
The same package has proven to be an optimization to PurePitch® for larger professional brewers for over a year.
The same package has proven to be an optimization to PurePitch® for larger professional brewers for over a year.
Higher Viability and Better Shelf-Life Lets You Pitch Whenever
Because we never stop, PurePitch® Next Generation has an improved proprietary film designed specifically for White Labs and allows for one-way off-gassing to reduce product inflation and deliver higher yeast health and longer shelf life. White Labs is the industry leader in quality with the same quality and care taken for every culture, including proprietary qPCR methods (developed with Invisible Sentinel) for higher limits of detection. With 38 quality checkpoints for every single strain, you can be assured that all products released from White Labs have passed rigorous tests to ensure the highest viability and purity at the time of QC release.
PurePitch® Next Generation packaging improves yeast performance:
PurePitch® Next Generation packaging improves yeast performance:
- Maintains high yeast glycogen reserves, so yeast stay healthier and perform better when used in fermentation
- Eliminates the negative stress of CO2 build-up in the package, leading to bloated packages and an unfriendly environment for the yeast
As part of our intensive quality control procedures, we routinely monitor the viability of our strains over time. We ensure that yeast leaves our facilities above 95% cell viability and we have seen that yeast stays highly viable (over 90% on average) for up to 7 months from date of production release!
The long shelf-life and sustained viability mean that you can confidently pitch any White Labs culture within the use-by date printed on the package and get a successful, healthy fermentation.
Why Does Pitch Rate Matter: More Consistent Beer Flavor
Consistency is key! Consistent Yeast growth = Consistent Beer Flavor. From fermentation, yeast consumes fermentable sugars into carbon dioxide and ethanol. But they also produce over 500 different flavor and aroma compounds in the beer. Different Pitch rates can lead to different problems!
Changes in pitching rate can affect
- Flavor production
- Length of fermentation
- Health of future generations
- Flocculation
- Harvesting
Risk of Underpitching/Overpitching
Underpitching
- Underpitching gives more room for yeast cells to grow and reproduce, therefore creating more yeast-derived flavor in the beer. This can work well in styles such as wheats, belgians, and saisons.
- Underpitching can also lead to stalled fermentations and inadequate clean-up of “off” flavors in the beer maturation phase
- With more yeast growth, there will be more cell growth leading to mutations such as flocculation characteristics
Overpitching
- Overpitching leads to less cell growth and less yeast-derived flavor
- Overpitching can also lead to sluggish fermentations over multiple generations, as with less cell growth means an older yeast cell generation for subsequent batches.
- See the graph below as fermentation speed degrades through subsequent batches with different pitch rates
Customize Your Pitch Rate based on your batch specifics
Working with high gravity brews or lower fermentation temperatures?
Learn More About PurePitch® Next Generation
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- April 4, 2024
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- November 16, 2023