petep1980

Recipes 

A 2.5+ gallon starter according to Mr. Malty for a 5.5 gallon, 1.060 SG Lager?

Do any homebrewers pitch at these rates?

mightynintendo

Recipes 

lagers need pretty substantial amounts of yeast. mr malty is good but you can use other resources to engineer a smaller starter with the same amount of necessary yeast. you could use 2 yeast packs in 2 gallons and that would work. 4 yeast packs in 0.8 gallons also works. Using a stir plate you could use 2 yeast packs in 0.75 gallon starter and that would also work. another thing to consider is if you refrigerate your starter for two days and decant, you will reduce the liquid you dump in your wort while still managing to dump in most of the yeast.

__________________
'Kilgore Trout once wrote a short story which was a dialogue between two pieces of yeast. They were discussing the possible purposes of life as they ate sugar and suffocated in their own excrement. Because of their limited intelligence, they never came close to guessing that they were making champagne.'

—Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions

SpanishCastleAle

Recipes 

I don't. I make a low grav lager and use the cake for the big lager, usually with enough left to save.

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Early brewers were primarily women, mostly because it was deemed a woman's job. Mesopotamian men, of some 3,800 years ago, were obviously complete assclowns and had yet to realize the pleasure of brewing beer.- Beer Advocate

petep1980

Recipes 

Well, I think maybe 1 pack with 1 gallon is w/in reason.

remilard

Recipes 

Yes, although I only make about 2 lager starters a year (and repitch for 4-5 additional lagers) and I do it on a stir plate with 2 packs of yeast.

Scimmia

Recipes 

There's a reason DIY stirplates are so popular. That one gallon with one pack you mention isn't too far off if you're using a stirplate.

petep1980

Recipes 

According to the wyeast website with a .375gallon starter and a stir plate my final pitch rate is 13.55 million cells/mL.

Also according to their sit you need between 12million and 18million for a cold pitch at my starting gravity at wort size.

remilard

Recipes 

Starting gravity about 12 plato I am guess? That is 1 - 1.5 million cells per ml per degree plato which is what is recommended in the literature. Jamil goes with 1.5 for lagers.

petep1980

Recipes 

Actually it looks like this can be greatly improved with a small step up of .5 gallons.

markg388

Recipes 

I've heard you can use 2 packs of dry saflager yeast. Ill find out how well it works on july 4th when i get to taste my first results, but the fermentation sure looked and smells healthy.


edit - Didn't see 1.060 gravity, I did 2 packs for 1.052, so yeah...........