fxdude

Recipes 

Awesome, thanks, that's the other calculator I was looking for.

Not sure if this is correct then. On Mr Malty I entered in my OG which will be 1.050 in 5.5 gallons, yeast was harvested and washed on 1/15/12. I have a fairly thick yeast slurry so I dragged that up to 3.5 and left the non-yeast percentage at default. This gave me a result of 66ml of my yeast slurry needed to get the 193billion yeast cells I'll need to pitch if pitching directly into the wort. That comes out to roughly 2.9billion yeast cells per ml of slurry.

I want to pitch 2 tablespoons of the slurry which is 29.6ml.

29.6ml x 2.9(billion cells) = 85.84 billion cells in my two tablespoons of slurry.

Then in the other yeast calculator I entered my 5.5g and my 1.050 OG which gave me the same 193billion cells needed. Then in the initial cell count I entered my 85.84 which will be my 2 tablespoons of slurry and left the production date today since Mr. Malty already calculated my viability. I'm going to use a stir plate so I entered that and then played with the Starter Volume amount until I got the Total Cells at Finish to be close to the 193 I'll need.

Looks like if I use 0.85L starter (850ml) I'll get my 193 (I'll probably just do a 1 liter starter just to be sure).

Sounds confusing but it makes sense to me, not sure if anyone wants to run those numbers to see if I'm crazy or not. Would be awesome if that gets included in one of the calculators.

mckay75

Recipes 

Hey...I'm curious how this worked out for you? I'm in a similar situation for a brew I have planned and I'm uncertain how much harvested yeast to use for a starter. The way you calculated makes good sense to me and I'm thinking I'm going to go ahead and follow you method.

Thanks

fxdude

Recipes 

I've actually been meaning to update this, thanks for the reminder. I just kegged it a little over a week ago so we tried it this weekend. The first thing I have to mention is that when I transferred from the carboy to the keg I noticed the yeast cake at the bottom was close to twice as thick as I'm used to seeing.

The beer itself is a good beer but I'm pretty sure I over pitched on the yeast. Even though it was just the California ale yeast the beer has a much stronger yeast flavor when compared to the batch from the initial pitch.

I think the tricky part is the sliders for the yeast thickness and non-yeast percentage on Mr Malty, it's really just a guessing game on those.

I think next time I'll try at least 2/3 of what I pitched, I could probably even go with half. It's definitely a tricky game when trying to make a starter from washed yeast.

Good luck and let me know what results you come up with.

fxdude

Recipes 

I should also mention that the beer finished slightly on the drier side, I'm guessing because there was so much yeast they just ate every little thing up.

midfielder5

Recipes 

Looking back at your posts, I think you would have needed 66ml (~4 1/2 tablespoons) to get 193 billion of pitchable yeast. You took 2 tablespoons and made a 0.85L starter.

> I would have taken the 4 1/2 TSP of slurry, and added like 1/2 a cup (not scientific) of my wort taken during the boil (chilled first) and spun this on my stir plate to wake 'em up (not to increase the number); then pitched. It might be called a real wort starter (RWS), if you search around here.
YMMV. good luck!

__________________
http://deviationbrewing.com/

fxdude

Recipes 

You are correct, I actually almost went with just pitching the 4.5 tablespoons but hadn't seen very many posts about taking washed yeast and growing it in a starter (rather than just waking it up).

That way instead of just getting three batches out of the amount of second generation yeast slurry I had I'd be able to get around six. Then for the third generation instead of getting around 9 batches I'd be able to get 15-18 and so on.

I'm definitely not going anywhere near that far with my yeast but I find the whole yeast lab, storing, and reusing very fascinating.

I would love to try a batch with just a direct pitch of second generation washed yeast, washed yeast multiplied in a starter, and directly dumping a new wort on top of a yeast cake. There are so many variables that would be hard to control but it all interests me.

Brew-boy

Recipes 

Mrmalty.com

__________________
Next:American Brown Ale.
Primary:
On Tap: Dusseldorf Alt, Cream Ale, Belgian Pale Ale.
Aging: Imperial Oatmeal Stout on Vanilla beans.

I rather owe you a dollar than cheat you out of it.."Dad"

http://lapeerareabrewers.com/

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LapeerAreaBrewers/

mckay75

Recipes 

Doh!! Just a little late reading your reply...dang. I followed the steps you posted. I was making a IIPA...OG was 1.088. I used 5 tbsp of harvested yeast and made a 2L starter with it...decanted some of the beer off the top and then pitched it. Should be interesting to say the least....confusing stuff working with harvested yeast (to me anyway). Thanks for taking the time to post a followup. I'll make a point to let you know how mine made out.

Thanks!

mckay75

Recipes 

wow! That didn't take long! I pitched the yeast around 10 PM last night after shaking the crap out of the wort...and its boobling already! Go yeasties!

fxdude

Recipes 

That's cool, I'm definitely curious to see how it turns out.

One thing I did that I would change is that I usually primary for three weeks with no secondary, because of the large amount of yeast I probably should have pulled it off the yeast after two weeks.