I am an average brewer so far, moving from extract to all grain. So I'm learning more and more as I go. I wanted to grow some of the Bell's yeast to make a two-hearted clone. Below is what I did:
5 bottles (last 10% of beer) added to 250mls of DME 1.02 - 3 days then cold crashed overnight
Decanted spent wort, resuspended yeast in 500ml of DME 1.02 - 2 days on stir plate then cold crashed overnight
Decanted spent wort, resuspended in 1L of DME 1.03 - 1 day on stir plate
Fermentation looks quite active in the flask
I am a biologist so I have access to my lab and microscopes. I took a sample of the yeast and counted the cells. I came out with 10 billion cells per ml which to me seems like a ton of yeast.
According to my pitch calculator I should be pitching my IPA with roughly 350 billion cells which is only 35mls of my 1L culture. But checking out everyone's starter protocols online they will actually pitch this entire liter culture which in my case would be 10 trillion cells total!!
That doesn't seem right to me, that's a ton more yeast than needed. Did I just over grow my culture, or are all yeast starters typically grown much higher than the exact pitch number that is needed?
I typically don't dork out and count my starter cultures from a smack pack, but this is my first time getting the yeast from a commercial beer so I really wanted to make sure my starters were growing well.
Any help with this would be greatly appreciated! Btw, if this is indeed true and I'll have an extra 950mls of bell's yeast, anyone want some!?
5 bottles (last 10% of beer) added to 250mls of DME 1.02 - 3 days then cold crashed overnight
Decanted spent wort, resuspended yeast in 500ml of DME 1.02 - 2 days on stir plate then cold crashed overnight
Decanted spent wort, resuspended in 1L of DME 1.03 - 1 day on stir plate
Fermentation looks quite active in the flask
I am a biologist so I have access to my lab and microscopes. I took a sample of the yeast and counted the cells. I came out with 10 billion cells per ml which to me seems like a ton of yeast.
According to my pitch calculator I should be pitching my IPA with roughly 350 billion cells which is only 35mls of my 1L culture. But checking out everyone's starter protocols online they will actually pitch this entire liter culture which in my case would be 10 trillion cells total!!
That doesn't seem right to me, that's a ton more yeast than needed. Did I just over grow my culture, or are all yeast starters typically grown much higher than the exact pitch number that is needed?
I typically don't dork out and count my starter cultures from a smack pack, but this is my first time getting the yeast from a commercial beer so I really wanted to make sure my starters were growing well.
Any help with this would be greatly appreciated! Btw, if this is indeed true and I'll have an extra 950mls of bell's yeast, anyone want some!?