dhickey

Recipes 

I'm still new with brewing, so I don't know alot about different strains, if the recipe says 1056, it is what I use. I am noticing that alot use 1056 though.

PoppinCaps

Recipes 

Yep, that's pretty standard. If you want to simplify a bit, after the initial starter, split that into 5 different sterile containers and refridgerate. Then a couple days before brewing, pour off the excess wort (while cold), raise to starter temp, swirl and add to the starter. Just one less refrigeration step. Just make sure the estimated final cell count matches with the size of the brew.

dhickey

Recipes 

That is the part that still eludes me... estimating my cell count

LVBen

Recipes 

You can use Mr. Malty: http://www.mrmalty.com/calc/calc.html for help with estimating.

Denny

Recipes 

Ah, a brewer of taste and refinement! I don't necessarily dislike 05. I just find it a bit different than 1056. When people say that they're the same, I just point out that although they may have started from the same source that they're subtly different these days.

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PoppinCaps

Recipes 

Yeah, it's a lot of guess work without actually doing a cell count with a scope or serial dilutions on plates and counting viable colonies. That's a cheaper way, but not reasonable every time you want to brew. It is handy for characterizing your strains though, and developing a standard practice for yourself to know how many cells should be there.

I'd say Mr Malty is good info as a standard.

In my experience, most strains like to populate to a certain density given time, O2 and nutrients, and then stay there for fermentation. Pretty repeatable too. I'm just one brewer, but if you want to play around with the numbers, I would say you can estimate that a fully grown healthy starter will have around 180-200 million cells per ml. If you calculate that up for pitching, that means a starter of 1.5L (285 billion cells) will pitch at a rate of 15 million cells per ml wort in a 5 gallon batch. That's over the top a bit, but it's also a best case (and not always likely) scenario.

If that's a healthy start for a beer, there's no reason not to assume it will work to make new starters. So if you make a healthy 1L starter from a smack pack, you can essentially make around 7 separate 1.5L starters (140ml each to go into the fridge, each innoculating a 1.5L starter for brewing).

But all of this is estimation based on real numbers. What I found just confirmed what everyone does as normal practice. So if you want to know exactly how many cells you have, get a microscope and hemocytometer or do serial dilutions on plates (PITA). I think you'll find it confirms what everyone here will tell you. Beyond that, diluting a healthy starter 1:10-15 as standard practice will give you good results (almost) every time.

dhickey

Recipes 

What do you mean by that starter number?

PoppinCaps

Recipes 

I mean diluting the starter volume into the beer at a rate of 1 part starter : 15 parts wort. So if you made a 1.5L starter (cool and drain the excess wort), then added the yeast to 5 gallons (19L) wort. That would be around 1:12.6.