Sanity Check - Starter for Bottling two batches

Brewers,

I'm planning to bottle two batches of beer that have been in secondary for about 5 months so my intention is to re-yeast at bottling.

I've never done this before, so I was thinking about making a small, (400ml) starter with one packet of dry yeast and splitting it in half to bottle each batch.

Is there any reason I should NOT do this?

Thanks!

Just rehydrate add half to each bottling bucket with the priming sugar. Or make a starter whatever makes you feel more comfortable.

What kind of beer is it? How high alcohol content? Since you are adding priming sugar you would not need to make a starter. If you are not careful you may end up with to much sugar in the bottles(I don't think the amounts you listed that you would).

I have had brews in primary that long and they carbed just fine without anything additional.

A starter would probably produce too much yeast. The amount of sugar you add to prime is very low, so not much yeast is needed. Unless you like the taste of yeast, and want a thick layer on the bottom of each bottle, only use about half a pack and split it between the two. One gram of dry yeast should be enough to split between both batches.

If you're using dry yeast you don't need to make a starter, just make a slurry of the yeast as if you were re-hydrating it anyway. Another option, and probably the easiest, would be to cool your priming solution to the proper temp range for the yeast and add half the packet to that, let it proof and add that to the bottling bucket.

You can also obviously, if you're using the same amount of priming sugar for both batches, make 4 cups of water, all your sugar, and then when it's cool pitch the whole pack of yeast onto that.

Just make sure if you do that you get the solution cool enough so as to NOT kill the yeast.

Thanks for the input!

I ended up going with beerman0001's suggestion. I re-hydrated the yeast in boilded/cooled water in a mason jar. I then pitched half of the solution to each batch in the bottling bucket. I made separate priming solutions for each batch and stirred in the slurry and priming solution gently in to the bottling bucket at the same time. I look forward to seeing how they turn out!

@BrewerBear: The batches were a kriek and a barleywine. Both had been in secondary for about 4 months. The fermentation seemed solid and complete, so I aimed low on the recommended scale of CO2 volumes for the sugar I used for each batch to be safe.

@Revvy: I made sure not to kill my yeast. 8^) Because I needed different priming solution ratios, I prepared them separately. I hadn't thought about re-hydrating the yeast in the individual priming solutions instead of water. That may have worked as well. Thanks for chiming in!