Any advantage of bigger starter?

Is there any advantage to pitching a 2 liter starter, decanted, vs a 1 liter starter that the calc says is required? Will pitching more cells than necessary hurt anything, is there such thing as too big, within reason? I'm not about to do something like this tomorrow but just curious.


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overpitching can cause problems just like underpitching. not sure of the mechanics of it but it's what chris white says (owner of white labs)

You won't really get any problems, but you will get little to no yeast character in the beer. So no benefit.

I read somewhere where somebody was pitching decanted gallon starters for a 5 gallon batch,don't recall the beer being high grav, so it got me thinking.


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kcbrewmeister said:

I read somewhere where somebody was pitching decanted gallon starters for a 5 gallon batch,don't recall the beer being high grav, so it got me thinking.


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State your volumes, gravities and viability of yeast, I really doubt you are "over-pitching."

This isn't for a specific batch that I am brewing just in general. For instance if mr malty suggests 1 liter starter for a given yeast viability and sg would pitching twice that be beneficial or have negative effects.


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What are you trying to accomplish? Its pretty well documented what over pitching does. It gives you less yeast character because they don't need to reproduce much.

kcbrewmeister said:

This isn't for a specific batch that I am brewing just in general. For instance if mr malty suggests 1 liter starter for a given yeast viability and sg would pitching twice that be beneficial or have negative effects.


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Number 1, you don't "know" your yeast cell count unless you are counting with a microscope + hemocytometer--these are best guess estimates.

So the estimated difference BTW a 1L and 2L starter with month old yeast is about 60M cells (~35% increase)...now tell me, which side of the line do YOU want to err on?

Are you using real oxygen or just shaking your wort--if you are just shaking and coming up with less than the 8 ppm minimum recommended oxygenation, IMO you ABSOLUTELY want to err on the side of more yeast.

kcbrewmeister said:

I read somewhere where somebody was pitching decanted gallon starters for a 5 gallon batch,don't recall the beer being high grav, so it got me thinking.


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for a lager batch you would want ~ a gallon starter even for moderate gravity beers.

the only major concern aside from lack of yeast character, is that a much too big pitch can cause an over active early fermentation which in turn can actually cause a stall.

the ideal is to pitch the correct amount of yeast. or as close as you are able to get. it's better to go a little over than a lot under but ~10% either way is not going to ruin your beer.