"I'm gonna re-hydrate some dry yeast and post some pics so you can follow along with me. A buddy stopped by and asked if I would make him some Sweetfeed likker and of course I said yes, ( just cause I wanted and excuse to make likker) and I'm gonna use bakers yeast cause he said make it like they did in the old days. Well he wont know its better than that but I will. So here go's ----------

Here's the yeast used and the just finished wort, both are different temps just for a little experiment...

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"The timer has timed out at the thirty minute mark and you can see the jug on the right is way ahead in the race to full krausen. So far so good.

I'm gonna reset the timer for maybe 45 minutes and letter go somemore. As for the temps I did'nt take them all the way through just at the beginning and the end."

"This is the next in the series and it shows its almost done and ready to pitch - you can see the one on the right is ready and its starting to fall now. Thats your sign that its ready to pitch.
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"Anyway this is how you re-hydrate dry yeast in my opinion -- that whole warm wort thing is just a good thing to do. I dont think fermentation should be that warm but from what I saw re-hydration should be. I know some will say just use warm water and I know that works but not like this and some say warm water with sugar and that will work too. But if I just made my wort why not use that, its gotta cool anyway.
Ok hope this helps somebody and makes it easier to understand the re-hydration theory."

"Ya know for several years I just put the yeast right on top of the wort and never really had a problem. I just made sure it was cooled to the proper temp and letter go. But this is something I really like and it seems to work really well. If you know you wort is below 100F (all the way to the bottom) then you could just add your yeast right to the fermenter and cap it. You'll see the airlock working in a little while if the yeast is good. This way just gives me piece of mind that I did'nt waste my time.

I'm not saying I'm right and they are wrong this is just something that I like so try each way of re-hydration and see which you like best."

Yess and dont forget. a starter bottle will multiply the number of yeast cells a few times before you pitch

"This is about 20 minutes into the whirl and its starting to show signs of growth.
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This is the next and if you squint you can see the yeast swirling around and the krausen head is now starting to fall. Its oly been about an hour or less. I added the yeast with temp about 85-88F and I think by now it used up all the sugar in the jug."

I've been baking bread products for years and have always hydrated yeast before adding it to the other ingredients and kind of carried that forward with dipping a few ounces of the wash, cooling it, and then adding the yeast to let it stand until fully proofed. It one recent of proofing the yeast, it fell to the bottom and did nothing so was able to tell early on of the problem. Thanks for the info and the photo's. Very interesting.

"What stirs the wort is a little stir bar inside the jug. Theres a computer fan motor inside the box with rare earth magnets (from a computer hard drive) glued on top and that is adjusted to fit right next to the lid inside. Then when you make a jug of juice you add a little steel bar ( its covered with plastic of course) and when the fan spinns it turns the bar inside the jug. Thats why I mentioned that the jug must be perfectly flat inside.

I did'nt think anyone would be interested in that aspect of the plate or I would take some pics. I did post some pics of the workings in another thread........look in the projects thread I think.... and thx for the interest.

I think when the yeast eats all the sugar it doesnt just die it just quits multiplying, thats why even if the starter is quite it will still ferment the wort in a livley fashion because of the extra sugar in the wort.

I bet if you would have added 5 lbs of sugar to that it would have taken off from the sounds of it.

Im gonna try to get some pics of all the workings for ya and add em here too...."