Need a check of my first starter attempt.

Hi all. I'm getting ready to do my first ever starter with WLP-002 for a Pre-prohibition pilsner lager. Mrmalty says I need a 1 liter starter and I've just finished building my stir plate so I'm ready to go. Brew day is Saturday but I probably won't pitch until either late Saturday or Sunday once I get my wort chilled to 50 degrees.

I'm gonna make my starter on Thursday and let it ferment on the stir plate for 24 to 36 hours, or whenever I think primary fermentation is over, then chill it in the fridge until I pitch. My theory is that my starter should come out of the fridge at about 40 degrees. I will decant and let it warm up to about 48 and then pitch into what is hopefully about a 48-50 degree wort. I think it's gonna take me over night to get the wort down to those temps.

I have brewed one other lager that I used Saflager yeast pitched warm then chilled. It did goos, but I want't to see if pitching slightly below fermentation temp works better.

Some questions I have, Should I still do a D-rest even though I pitched cold, just for assurance, and Should I decant before or after warming?

If you have any thoughts or suggestions on the process or the D-rest, I'd be grateful to hear all.
Thanks,
~hare

1) Do a 2L starter at least, unless you are pitching 2 vials. One vial? 3L is what Mr. Malty recommends for a 1.048 lager.

2) Your temperature scheme seems fine.

3) D-rest? Taste it and see. I find that if you pitch/aerate properly, you usually don't need one.

AmandaK said:

1) Do a 2L starter at least, unless you are pitching 2 vials. One vial? 3L is what Mr. Malty recommends for a 1.048 lager.

2) Your temperature scheme seems fine.

3) D-rest? Taste it and see. I find that if you pitch/aerate properly, you usually don't need one.

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Just pitching 1 vial, but I'm only doing a 2.4 gallon batch of lager @ 1.052 so Mrmalty said a l liter starter should do the trick. Cool thanks for the info.

Check mrmalty again. I just plugged in numbers using 2 months prior to today for the production date and it does give 1 liter starter but starting from 2 vials!

Lagers always need a lot of yeast.

kh54s10 said:

Check mrmalty again. I just plugged in numbers using 2 months prior to today for the production date and it does give 1 liter starter but starting from 2 vials!

Lagers always need a lot of yeast.

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You're right. I rechecked it using todays date. I was using 8/31/12 for my production date. I read that white labs says 4 months prior to best by date on vial and mine is December 2012 so that's why I calculated using 8/31.

That's interesting, I must be on the edge of having to use 2 vials. 1 week later says 1 vial with a 1.04 liter starter. I may drop my batch size back to 2.25 just to be safe and go with one vial. I wonder if I should make a little bigger starter as well, maybe 1.2 liter for some extra yeasty insurance.

harebearva said:

That's interesting, I must be on the edge of having to use 2 vials. 1 week later says 1 vial with a 1.04 liter starter. I may drop my batch size back to 2.25 just to be safe and go with one vial. I wonder if I should make a little bigger starter as well, maybe 1.2 liter for some extra yeasty insurance.

Click to expand...

With lagers, it is always better to err on the side of "MORE YEAST!" than not. Underpitching lagers is a terrible idea, an idea I thought was a great one until I tried it. Live and learn!

That being said, I plugged your numbers into yeastcalc.com (the calculator I prefer) looks like a 1.25L starter with that production date, 1.052 & 2.4 gallon batch will produce 191B cells, you need 175B at 19.2M cells/mL of wort. Good to go!

AmandaK said:

With lagers, it is always better to err on the side of "MORE YEAST!" than not. Underpitching lagers is a terrible idea, an idea I thought was a great one until I tried it. Live and learn!

That being said, I plugged your numbers into yeastcalc.com (the calculator I prefer) looks like a 1.25L starter with that production date, 1.052 & 2.4 gallon batch will produce 191B cells, you need 175B at 19.2M cells/mL of wort. Good to go!

Click to expand...

Excellent. I hadn't seen that site before. I'm gonna start using that calculator. Thanks again.

OOPS. Just an FYI clarification. I said I was using WLP-002. No, For my CAP pre-prohibition lager I'm actually using WLP-800. I wasn't thinkin