More Ester Thoughts

My brain has been working a million miles an hour at this ester problem. A couple of things to note.

1. The furlough beer was underpitched. Nottingham website says about 55 billion in a packet. For 5 gallons of 1.045 beer I want something like 250 billion. So about 4.5 packets. I pitched 2 packets. I wonder if I had pitched 4 would the beer be great.

2. The realization from #1 leads to a problem. The last split batch I added one vial of WLP001 to 2.5 gallons of wort and two vials of WLP001 to a different 2.5 gallons of wort. I was adding just about as much yeast as you can into the second and it was still horribly estery. What was the difference between furlough beer and the split batch.
- The ingredients? Split batch had munich. Furlough had crystal and rye.
- The temp swings in the chest fridge? The split batches were smaller in volume and would be affected more by the temp swings. The really small (3 quart) infected test batches should then exhibit very estery taste when done.
- Yeast? Split batch had WLP001 and Furlough had Nottingham.

All things to test. Gotta go fly now.