Yeast Starter Question

Havent brewed in a while....trying a shiner bock clone. OG around 1.053ish. I have a Wyeast smackpack and a 2 liter flask.
Brewersfriend calc says I need bigger than 2 liter, cant hardly believe this. Made heavier lagers/starters with this flask. Smack pack is 1 week old. I'm confused as to how big I have to have it & how much DME to add per water. Help! Thx.

1L starter should do it, assuming 5-ish gallon batch. You have a stir plate?

Edit: Wait, this is a lager, right? In that case, you'll need a 2 liter starter to get you in the ball park.

Yes. Have a stir plate. If go 1L starter, how much DME?

Ok. 2 Liter starter. Yes a lager.

For starter wort, use 1g DME for every 10 ml H2O, so 100g DME for 1L starter. 2L starter takes 200g DME.

Ok great! Thanks a bunch!

I looked at the Brewers Friend calculator. Using the Pro Brewer 1.5 lager pitch rate, and figuring a 5.25 gallon brew, a two liter starter will result in +7 billion cells, at a target pitch rate of 372 billion cells. This is selecting "Braukaiser-Stirplate".
Pro Brewer 1.5 lager pitch rate is probably the minimum pitch rate recommended for a lager though.
A 2 liter starter in a 2 liter flask may result in some over flow. I use a 1.1 gallon Rubbermaid container, on the stir plate, for starters over 1 liter.

I have a 1 gallon jug I can use. I forgot! Crap! So I can go up to a gallon. Been too long since I've brewed!!! So I could let'er rip a lil bigger.

So I could do a 3L with 300g of dme and should be good! Thx for help all!

My initial fermentation temp is going to be mid 50s. I've read where you want to pitch your starter as close to that as possible. That seems difficult. Would seem more difficult to keep it at that temp. Thoughts? Pitch cooler and allow to rise? Thx

I always pitch lagers around 47-48 and allow to rise to 51-52 and hold there until the D-rest.

I'm sorry, I was talking about the starter. What temp do I want the wort to be when pitching? I had read the you want the yeast to get acclimated to temps close to what you'll pitch them at.

Oh, right. Run your starter at normal room temp... 65-75-ish. No need to run a lager starter at lager ferm temps. Do it just like an ale starter.

Normally I pitch cooler than the fermentation temperature and let the wort rise to the temp I will ferment at. I do this because I don't have good cooling abilities for a warm wort with active yeast.

I believe it was Woodland Brew that just recently posted a side by side experiment. One wort pitched cool and the other wort pitched warm and then cooled to ferm temp. Both beers attenuated and tasted the same.

Seems like you could go either way and have the same results.

edit: Any starter, ale or lager, can be done at room temperature.

flars said:

I believe it was Woodland Brew that just recently posted a side by side experiment. One wort pitched cool and the other wort pitched warm and then cooled to ferm temp. Both beers attenuated and tasted the same.

Click to expand...

It was Brulosopher's exbeeriment.

LLBeanJ said:

It was Brulosopher's exbeeriment.

Click to expand...

Thank you for the correction and the credit to the right person.

Great. You folks are great! Appreciated!