New article Your fans have no time.Your Beer Club is the answer. Read the article

Weigh the dry, count the liquid, measure the slurry

Yeast pitch rate
Dry yeast is pitched by weight. Lallemand recommends 0.5 to 1.0 g per litre, 50 to 100 g/hL, at 5 to 6 billion viable cells per gram. Check your strain's data sheet; the presets follow the type above.
Reading in Brix? Convert it in the SG and Plato converter first.
Dry yeast to weigh
1,000 g
50 g/hL on 20 hL
Viable cells pitched
5,000 billion
Rate this equals
0.21M/mL/°P
11 g sachets
91
500 g bricks
2.0

Have an idea that would make this tool better? Tell me and I will build it in.

Pitch chart
Viable cells needed in billions at the ale rate, 0.75 million cells per mL per degree Plato, and the dry yeast that supplies them at 5 billion viable cells per gram. Double both for a lager. Tap a cell to load it.
Volume12 °P15 °P18 °P
5 hL4,500 B · 900 g5,625 B · 1,125 g6,750 B · 1,350 g
10 hL9,000 B · 1,800 g11,250 B · 2,250 g13,500 B · 2,700 g
15 hL13,500 B · 2,700 g16,875 B · 3,375 g20,250 B · 4,050 g
20 hL18,000 B · 3,600 g22,500 B · 4,500 g27,000 B · 5,400 g
25 hL22,500 B · 4,500 g28,125 B · 5,625 g33,750 B · 6,750 g
30 hL27,000 B · 5,400 g33,750 B · 6,750 g40,500 B · 8,100 g
40 hL36,000 B · 7,200 g45,000 B · 9,000 g54,000 B · 10,800 g
50 hL45,000 B · 9,000 g56,250 B · 11,250 g67,500 B · 13,500 g
Method

Cells needed are the pitch rate in million cells per mL per degree Plato, times the degrees Plato, times the volume in millilitres. The rates are 0.75 for ales and 1.5 for lagers, after George Fix, taken up by White and Zainasheff in Yeast (2010), with 1.0 as the high gravity preset. Dry yeast does not go through that formula: it is pitched by weight, at the rate on the strain's data sheet, because its viability is stable in the pack and the manufacturer's rates are tested per production. Lallemand puts it at 0.5 to 1.0 g per litre and warns that cell-count calculators overpitch dry yeast three to six times. The dry mode therefore works from grams per hectolitre and shows the cell count that weight supplies; the cell-calculator comparison under the fields shows what the same batch would demand through the liquid formula. Slurry volume is cells needed, divided by the slurry density times viability. Conversions: 1 hL = 100 L, 1 US gal = 3.785 L, 1 US bbl = 117.35 L, 1 UK bbl = 163.66 L. Rehydration, oxygenation and starters are on the strain's data sheet, not here.

cells = rate × °P × mL, then grams = cells / cells per gram, or litres of slurry = cells / (density × viability)
Questions

Why do dry yeast and liquid yeast need different calculators?

Because the cell-count formula was built for liquid yeast, whose viability drops in storage, so the rates carry a safety margin. Dry yeast keeps its viability for years in the pack, and the manufacturers test their weight-based rates on every production. Run a 15 degree Plato wort through a one million cells per mL per degree calculator and it asks for 3 g per litre of dry yeast, three to six times Lallemand's recommendation. Weigh dry yeast; count liquid yeast.

Lallemand Brewing, Dry Yeast Viability and Pitching Rates, best practices document.

How much dry yeast for a 20 hL batch?

At the ale rate of 50 g/hL, 1,000 g, so two 500 g bricks with 0 g to spare, or 91 sachets of 11 g, supplying 5,000 billion viable cells. A dry lager strain at 100 g/hL doubles that: 4 bricks, 2 kg. The gravity does not change the weight; the strain and the type do.

Can I pitch a lager with an ale calculator?

The formula is the same; the rate is not. Lagers ferment cold, where yeast works slower, so the usual rate is double the ale rate, 1.5 against 0.75 million cells per mL per degree Plato, and dry lager strains carry the same doubling in their data sheets, around 100 g/hL against 50. An ale-rate lager tends to a long lag and a sulfury, stressed fermentation. Switch the type above and the presets follow.

The interview series

The next interview lands in your inbox

Every piece in this series asks the breweries behind the best Beer Clubs in the world how they actually run them. Subscribe and the next one reaches you the day it publishes.

If nothing shows up, look in spam.

PS: Thanks for subscribing.

Latest articles

View all posts

Your customers have no time. Your Beer Club is the answer.

Nobody has time anymore. Your best customers scroll past the new release, plan to order tonight, then dinner and the kids happen and the laptop never opens.

Recurring revenue is the healthiest money your brewery can make

A Beer Club fixes the oldest cash-flow problem in brewing: you pay for everything before the beer sells, then wait months for the trade to pay.

Why starting with one tier is the best thing you could do for you Beer Club

Why launching a Beer Club with one pricing tier almost always wins. How I got it wrong at my own brewery, and how fixing it doubled my members in a month.

The three people who actually sign up for your Beer Club

Three customer profiles I see again and again on Beer Club subscriptions, what each one wants, and why most breweries design for the wrong one.

Two new RIWAKA features your Beer Club page can't do without

Two e-commerce tools that turn every Beer Club visitor into either a subscriber or a name on your list, now included in every Riwaka build.

Your email list is the biggest asset of your Beer Club

Why your email list outperforms Instagram for a brewery, why alcohol brands are exposed to platform decisions, and what to build instead.

How you give me access to your Shopify store without exposing your data

The Shopify access I take to build your Beer Club, step by step. Why your revenue, customer data, and finances stay invisible to me throughout.

How I install the Riwaka system into your Shopify store without breaking it

How the Beer Club system goes into your Shopify store without touching your checkout, your live pages, or anything customers can already see.

A love letter to Riwaka 💚

They named you after a valley. A village at the top of New Zealand's South Island, on a river the Māori call Riuwaka. Riu, the interior of a canoe. Waka, the canoe.
Your customers have no time. Your Beer Club is the answer.