Yeast Starter - How long does it last?

Hello all.

I am about to start my first all grain recipe. It is a Chimay bleu cone. I have a few questions about yeast that I hope someone can help me with.

I have one vial of WLP500 and am brewing 3 gallons. Should I make starter in your opinion or just pitch it straight? I used Mr Malty calculator and for this volume and this gravity (1.086) it says that I need a 1.5 ltr starter. Does this sound right?

The recipe calls for me to "prime the beer in the secondary with a fresh strain of yeast 3 days before bottling". Should that be with the same volume of yeast do you think?

I was thinking of making a starter of 2 ltrs, pitching 1.5 for the primary fermentation and then saving the last 0.5 ltr for the "3days before bottling" phase. Would that leave me with enough cells for primary?

Is there any way I can store the yeast starter safely for approx 7 weeks without killing it? 7 weeks being the time in both primary and secondary (1 week primary, 6weeks secondary)

Many thanks, Andrew.

For some reason I don't think you'd need a starter on a 3 gal batch. Even with the high gravity you're pitchign 5gal worth of yeast into a 3 gal batch. Also I don't think you'd need to repitch with only 7 weeks of aging, you'd still have plenty of suspended yeast to carb.

However I'd wait for a professional to chime in before you take my word for it.

That was my original thought but then I began to read threads about the Mr Malty calculator and began to question myself... Still confused as to what the best procedure would be.

P.S cvstrat What do you mean ONLY 7weeks...! for me that is a lifetime of waiting. Not to mention the months of bottle conditioning. This will be a severe test of my patience as to whether I can refrain from tampering! Should taste great if I can keeps my hands off it for that long though.

1.5L sounds right.

I would think that the pre-bottling yeast priming could be much smaller, like your .5L idea.

You can store the starter safely by decanting the spent wort and following the concepts in the Yeast Washing sticky.

Most Chimay Blue clones call for a pitch into the secondary, ~3 days prior to bottling. Unfortunately I cannot answer your question directly, but I can tell you that you won't be using your second started for about 10 days min. considering the high gravity. Will it last until then? I'm guessing it will if you keep giving the yeasties food! I am sitting on 2 Wyeast 1388 (Belgian Strong) activator packs that I'll be using for my Chimay clone.

OH and note, i've read that you should condition for at least 6 months for this to have any semblance of the real deal..

Thanks for the replies.

My idea was to create a 2L starter and when it has finished decant the liquid leaving only the yeast. I would then put 3/4 of this into the primary and the remaining 1/4 into a jar and refrigerate. Or possible into the empty sterilized vile that the original yeast came in.

Could I put the remaining 1/4 of the yeast slurry into a jar or vile and refrigerated without any 'food' eg wort or would it just die?

If it's a White Labs vial you can in fact sterilize it (ie, in a pressure cooker). Perhaps you meant "sanitized", though.

The slurry goes into your container without food (ie, only water) on purpose. This is spelled out in the yeast washing sticky I suggested before. Have you had a chance to read it yet?

Thanks.

I read the thread about yeast washing, but earlier on in this thread a reply stated that it would survive 7 weeks if the yeast was fed. So I wasn't sure what to do.