Urgent question/ advice for a new guy

I've been planning for a week now to make two batches of brew simultaneously. one batch will be a hef and the other batch will be apfelwein. I really wanted to use the same yeast strain wlp300 and pitch it into both.

Because of work and school restricting my time i wont have a free afternoon for about ten days other than tomorrow. I made the quick decision to make tomorrow a brew day and I got my single vial of yeast into a starter for the night.

Now I was planning on growing this vial so that i can pitch it into both of these batches but i don't think i'll have large enough yeast numbers to actually accomplish this task (pitching into 2- 5gallon batches).The starter that I made was 1/2 cup dme to 2 cups water.

I just really wanted to get the hef started tomorrow since it only takes a few weeks anyways.

There are no question marks in your post.

just brew the hef tomorrow? The apfelwein doesn't require any brewing its just pouring ingredients into a carboy?

If you're going to use liquid yeast then you need to be certain that you're pitching a healthy volume of yeast for each beer. This is a great resource for pitching:

http://www.mrmalty.com/calc/calc.html

IMO - I would use the one vial in a starter for one of the beers and pickup a packet of dry yeast for the other, probably the Apfelwein, if you're insisting on doing both batches on the same day.

Sorry, The question was will the one vial of yeast grow enough over night so that i could pitch it into two batches (one of beer one of apfelwein)?

I was thinking i would need to step up the starter to accomplish this so i was asking if that is in fact the case.

I know i should use mr malty but it is very confusing to me for some reason. i guess i just need to look at it more.

Edit:
Mrmalty says that i need a one liter starter so i guess i need to step up at least once before i can pitch is that right? since my first starter was 2 cups. i would need around 4 to make a liter.

mr_rogers said:

Sorry, The question was will the one vial of yeast grow enough over night so that i could pitch it into two batches (one of beer one of apfelwein)?

Click to expand...

no; it probably would not be enough for even one of the two (unless the beer batch is an low OG recipe).

In the first hours of a starter the yeast are in the lag stage of growth. There is little growth going on in those first hours. I would expect very little increase in yeast cell number in that time period.

The best solution (in my opinion) is to hustle over to a LHBS and buy yourself multiple packets of dry yeast, if you want to brew today/tonight.

Well I made the hef, the yeast starter had a full twenty four hours of growth time before i pitched it last night. I don't know if there was as much yeast as I "should" have but there was only about 2 hours in lag time and it's bubbling about 5 times a second right now (12hours after).

I decided that I would use a bottle of harvested yeast from this batch for the apple cider next week.

24 hours should be enough for a beer like a Hefeweizen. My personal preference is to give my starters 48 hours, but it sounds like your fermentation started off great. Good luck with the cider!

For the apfelwein, I would advise, like others above, that dropping a few dollars on a packet (or two, depending on the gravity) of dry yeast would be the wisest course. I think it would help to get a few brews under your belt before washing, just to be sure that your sanitation is up to snuff. If you get through a few without infections, then you can trust that you're not endangering your next batch.

I'd also be hesitant to use washed beer yeast in a cider/apfelwein, just to avoid hops carryover, though I suppose your hefeweizen is probably not heavily hopped.

zeg said:

For the apfelwein, I would advise, like others above, that dropping a few dollars on a packet (or two, depending on the gravity) of dry yeast would be the wisest course. I think it would help to get a few brews under your belt before washing, just to be sure that your sanitation is up to snuff. If you get through a few without infections, then you can trust that you're not endangering your next batch.

I'd also be hesitant to use washed beer yeast in a cider/apfelwein, just to avoid hops carryover, though I suppose your hefeweizen is probably not heavily hopped.

Click to expand...

+1 to this....lets not kid ourselves: apfelwein is basically apple juice hootch. No need to go overboard on the yeast selection. Dry yeast will get you there in fine shape.

Well i've brewed three batches now so the term new guy probably wasn't the right one to use. I've been harvesting from the beginning and haven't had any issues with my washed yeast. Sanitation is definitely important though!

The apfelwien that i wanted to make isn't the same recipe that from the "man i love apfelwein" thread. There is another thread called "better than apfelwein" where they talk about using yeasts other than montrachet. Hef yeasts are popular among those guys and gals.