What size starter do you make for your 5-6g brews?

How many of you fellas actually use a full-sized 2(+) liter starter? Seems many brewers here use maybe half or even just a quarter of that amount. Well, let's see how the numbers fall then.

Are you familiar with the idea of pitching more yeast for higher gravity beers? Your poll uses starter volumess like its some kind of rule of thumb, but the nominal yeast count is different for every beer. Your going to need multiple vials and several liters of starter for beers over 1.100 gravity, for example. Mrmalty is your friend

They vary, but mostly I am always around 1L.

Rule of the thumb: 1L/1qt. for an average gravity ale, 2L/2qt for a lager or a high gravity ale.

Depends on the brew but ranges between 1.5-3 liters for 6 gal.

1qt works for me, but I don't make anything over 1.065-1.070 or so.

Mr Malty is my guide but I always favor an over pitch rather than under. 2 to 3L on most ales and 4L on lagers.

Whoops, I should have made an option for "Do the math and pitch exact amount"

Didn't mean to leave anyone out. I'm totally in favor of doing the math. Seems though that most "yeast starter threads" feature brewers who make a set size starter of somewhat random gravity, rather than doing the math.

Not going for real scientific results, just want to gauge how many brewers make very large starters as are generally required by the math, Vs how many just make some arbitrary size or another that works for them. If you do the math, that would count as "full size" to me, being that it's almost certainly going to be over 1L. Let's use that as a compromise.

I just dump in the packet - with that said, 1 I've not gotten on to making starters but have thought about it alot, and 2 all of my beers havebeen in the<1.060 gravity range, so while a packet/smack pack of yeast is low, it isn't crazy low.

bottlebomber said:

Your going to need multiple vials and several liters of starter for beers over 1.100 gravity, for example. Mrmalty is your friend

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If you're making a starter anyway, why would you waste money buying multiple yeast packs?

dwarven_stout said:

If you're making a starter anyway, why would you waste money buying multiple yeast packs?

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Because it will give you a jump on the amount of healthy yeast cells that you have, and make your starter more viable. The amount of money spent on a very large beer hardly makes the $6 extra spent on a healthy fermentation seem like a waste in my opinion.

bottlebomber said:

Because it will give you a jump on the amount of healthy yeast cells that you have, and make your starter more viable. The amount of money spent on a very large beer hardly makes the $6 extra spent on a healthy fermentation seem like a waste in my opinion.

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What? You need to pitch multiple packs into a starter?

I'd say to each their own, but that seems crazy to me. The whole purpose of making a starter is to ensure you're pitching an adequate amount of healthy, viable yeast into your beer. To do that, you grow yeast. It's completely unnecessary to use multiple vials/smackpacks/whatever to start that process. In fact, it's completely possible to ramp up a pitchable amount for a 1.100 beer from just a mL of yeast off of a slant.

To each his own, guys.

Some people don't have the large vials and stirplates needed to get an adequate cell count in a reasonable number of steps.

Also, unless you're preparing your starter wort in an AUTOCLAVE or pressure cooker, and pitching a totally pure yeast culture, with immaculate sanitary practice, it is going to be slightly contaminated with bacteria/wild yeasts. Wort is almost always going to have a little bit of these contaminants, but ideally the cell counts are small enough to be manageable. And each time you step up the starter, you are also increasing these cell counts, thereby increasing chances of the contamination turning into an infection.

And of course, each time you step it up, you're also further exposing it to external contaminants.

And the last reason I can think of, off the top of my head, is time. Some people don't want to or just can't wait that long for a starter. Considering how long a single step takes to ferment and crash cool in order to decant, it's not unthinkable that somebody might be brewing frequently enough to need to have 3-4 stirplate starters going at once (instead of quite a few more simple starters!), but simply don't have the equipment or capacity to do so.

So there are certainly reasons for wanting to use multiple vials with a starter - it's all about the balance between costs and benefits, and everybody is obviously going to balance these things differently.

Me? I never buy multiple vials of the same yeast to pitch in the same beer.

But I can still recognize it's a valid practice. If it wasn't a valid practice, I don't think Jamil Z would set up the MrMalty calculator to be able to tell you that, for instance, you need to pitch 3 vials into a 3L stirplate starter. Heck, my Brewzor Android app even includes the ability to calculate a multi-vial starter with multiple step ups.

However, even though it's a valid practice, it's NEVER a necessary one, and so saying that you NEED to use multiple vials if pitching into wort above a given OG is incorrect. And personally, I find yeast expensive enough that I would never recommend - a stirplate is definitely a worthwhile investment, and a 5L E-flask is also a purchase I'd make again in a heartbeat.

As emjay stated, time is a big factor in making a starter that will be adequate. Sure you could build a starter from 1ml of yeast, but that it going to really take a long time, and bastard yeast are in there growing with yor pedigree yeast the whole time. If I can plan it right, I will pitch onto a yeast cake, I try to hang on to slurry, but that's the best I can do.

2 L and up for me on every brew.

2L for a 1.060 ish ale, which is my usual gravity beer. Mostly I use dry but when I use liquid it's one tube, no step-up. I've just pitched the WL yeast back in the early days and while it made beer, it was never as good as it is with a large starter.

I always lie, cheat and tinker with Mr. Malty to insure that I don't need two tubes of yeast - don't tell him please!

2 - 4L, depending on OG.

I always lie, cheat and tinker with Mr. Malty to insure that I don't need two tubes of yeast

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+1 to this. You just up the starter size... No need to spend $20+ on yeast for one batch!