Starter Step-up help

Ok fellows.
I'm Brewing Saturday. a 1.070 traditional bock. My HBS had one yeast of 833 and it's best before date was Jan 5 2013. According to Mr. Malty that leaves it at 10% viable. How, and is it possible, can I come up with the 510 billion cells I need for a 20 liter batch by Saturday. I don't have a stirplate, yet, but I do shake it and do have an 02 tank and and airation stone. Any help would be appreciated.

• Mr Malty calculates 255 billion cells for 1.07 and 20 L
• With O2 at start you only need 3 liters of starter, if you shake it you need a little more than 2

1. Make a 1 liter starter. Hit it with O2 and shake it when you can. Wait 2 days.
2. Make 2 1 liter starters with no yeast. Split your initial starter into the 2 new starters.

Should be ready by the time you pitch Saturday
You can buy pop bottles for your starters. They're cheap and work great.

..... Just noticed it also says you need a whole lot of vials. Get some new yeast.

http://www.yeastcalc.com/

i stepped up a wyeast 2565 yeast that was 6 months old. it was also 10% viability. i started with a 1/2 liter starter and moved on to 1 liter followed by 2 liter. it took some work but i enjoyed the experiment. i used a stir plate but intermittent shaking works great also.

making a stir plate is pretty easy and fun. if you have any interest i would suggest looking into it. lots of info on here and youtube.

http://www.yeastcalc.com/ is great! It does step ups for you which is something mr malty doesn't do.

Thanks guys. That yeast calc program is awesome. Never heard of it before. Doing a 1/2l, then 1.5 then 1.5 then 2L and I will get the cell count that I need. Think I will make a stir plate too. Thanks again.

Yeah, stir plates are super helpful and really easy to throw together. I had absolutely zero electrical experience before building mine and pulled it off.

Sayers said:

Thanks guys. That yeast calc program is awesome. Never heard of it before. Doing a 1/2l, then 1.5 then 1.5 then 2L and I will get the cell count that I need. Think I will make a stir plate too. Thanks again.

Click to expand...

Change the amounts if you have a vessel that will hold the right amount and you can get the number of steps down.

When I do step starters it takes 2 days per step. 24 hours to ferment, over night in the fridge, decant then next step so if I was doing your starter schecule it would take at least 8 days.