Splitting a single yeast vial - possible?

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Brulosopher

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I want to brew 2 beers with WLP810 San Francisco Lager yeast... and I have a single vial. Here's what I'm thinking, please let me know if you think this will work or not.

First off, I used YeastCalc.com to determine all of my numbers. I will be making a 1.052 Cal Common and a 1.050 Honey Blonde(ish), requiring 267 and 257 cells, respectively. My plan...

1. Initially make a single 3 liter starter in a 5 L, chill the wort and pitch the entire vial of yeast; place it on stir plate for about an hour or so; pour 1.5 L of the beer into the 2 L flask and leave both on stir plates until they finish fermenting.

2. Whenever they're done fermenting, probably 3 days or so, cold crash over night, decant, and pour another 1 L of fresh (chilled) wort into each flask, then let them both ferment out completely again, another 3 days I suppose.

3. Cold crash, decant, pitch into respective brews.

According to YeastCalc, this "should" leave me with about 292 cells per flask, just more than necessary. I do plan to ferment both beers rather cool, around 56F.

Thanks for any help! Cheers.
 
Yeah I can't see why that won't work (I didn't check your numbers on YeastCalc).

What I've taken to doing is, when I buy a new White Labs vial, I just put 1/2 of it into my starter (accounting for the fact that there's only half the yeast to begin with), and save the rest, rather than either washing yeast or building up an extra-big starter the way described in your sig.

So this should work just fine.
 
I have two stirplates and two 2L flasks so I usually use the entire vial on a single 1.5L starter. When that completes, I chill, decant and split that into the two 2L flasks and do another 1.5L starter in each.

There's no problem with splitting the vials and/or starters for subsequent steps.
 
I have two stirplates and two 2L flasks so I usually use the entire vial on a single 1.5L starter. When that completes, I chill, decant and split that into the two 2L flasks and do another 1.5L starter in each.

There's no problem with splitting the vials and/or starters for subsequent steps.

This is my option B... if people think option A is ****...
 
I want to brew 2 beers with WLP810 San Francisco Lager yeast... and I have a single vial. Here's what I'm thinking, please let me know if you think this will work or not.

First off, I used YeastCalc.com to determine all of my numbers. I will be making a 1.052 Cal Common and a 1.050 Honey Blonde(ish), requiring 267 and 257 cells, respectively. My plan...

1. Initially make a single 3 liter starter in a 5 L, chill the wort and pitch the entire vial of yeast; place it on stir plate for about an hour or so; pour 1.5 L of the beer into the 2 L flask and leave both on stir plates until they finish fermenting.

2. Whenever they're done fermenting, probably 3 days or so, cold crash over night, decant, and pour another 1 L of fresh (chilled) wort into each flask, then let them both ferment out completely again, another 3 days I suppose.

3. Cold crash, decant, pitch into respective brews.

According to YeastCalc, this "should" leave me with about 292 cells per flask, just more than necessary. I do plan to ferment both beers rather cool, around 56F.

Thanks for any help! Cheers.

It will work just fine. If you're using stir plates it will only take about 36 hours for each 1.5L starter to ferment. IME. Then maybe 24 hrs for the second 1L step-up.
 
Stauffbier said:
It will work just fine. If you're using stir plates it will only take about 36 hours for each 1.5L starter to ferment. IME. Then maybe 24 hrs for the second 1L step-up.

Rad. I'll be making the first starter tomorrow, cold crashing Wednesday, decanting and stepping it up Thursday, cold crashing Sunday, then decanting and pitching on Monday.
 
It should work just fine. You aren't going to know how many cells you really have without a cell count, but with clean yeast from a starter 1.5 million cells per ml of thick cold crashed cake should get you in the ball park. I've seen about the same number of cells produced with intermittent shaking as with a stir plate. The stir plate might get you to completion faster. Inoculation rate doesn't seem to be as big a factor as the calculators make it look. Doing one 5 litter in an ale pail over three days will give you about the same cell count as the stepping you are planning.

See here for details:
http://woodlandbrew.blogspot.com/2013/01/starter-cell-growth.html
 
It should work just fine. You aren't going to know how many cells you really have without a cell count, but with clean yeast from a starter 1.5 million cells per ml of thick cold crashed cake should get you in the ball park. I've seen about the same number of cells produced with intermittent shaking as with a stir plate. The stir plate might get you to completion faster. Inoculation rate doesn't seem to be as big a factor as the calculators make it look. Doing one 5 litter in an ale pail over three days will give you about the same cell count as the stepping you are planning.

See here for details:
http://woodlandbrew.blogspot.com/2013/01/starter-cell-growth.html

Do you see any problem with putting a vial directly into a 5L starter vs stepping up to 5L? Is there an affect on the yeast for the beer fermentation and/or for following generations?
 
That's fine. It will take longer to finish, but will probably be shorter than doing two steps.
100 billion cells in 5 litters is 20 billion cells per liter. A 1.040 ale would be pitched at typically 7 billion cells per liter.
 
Another question-

Could I just pour half of the vial into 2 separate starter worts? I'd have to eyeball it, but I'm sure it'd be close to half.
 
Another question-

Could I just pour half of the vial into 2 separate starter worts? I'd have to eyeball it, but I'm sure it'd be close to half.

That would be fine as well. Don't worry about splitting it exactly in half. Even it it was a 1/3 to 2/3 split the results will be about the same.
 
WoodlandBrew said:
That would be fine as well. Don't worry about splitting it exactly in half. Even it it was a 1/3 to 2/3 split the results will be about the same.

Cool, thanks!
 
As I mentioned upthread, that is what I have been doing with new WL vials - just make my first starter out of ~1/2 the yeast and save the rest for the next batch (and account for the reduced amount of yeast to start with in YeastCalc). Seems to be working well so far.
 
As I mentioned upthread, that is what I have been doing with new WL vials - just make my first starter out of ~1/2 the yeast and save the rest for the next batch (and account for the reduced amount of yeast to start with in YeastCalc). Seems to be working well so far.

Right on. I've got 2 1500 mL starters going as we speak, from one vial of WLP810. I'll step both up with 1 L each on Thursday (after cold crashing over night and decanting). I'll then let them go until Sunday, cold crash over night, then decant and pitch on Monday.

Thanks to everyone for the help. Cheers!
 
As I mentioned upthread, that is what I have been doing with new WL vials - just make my first starter out of ~1/2 the yeast and save the rest for the next batch (and account for the reduced amount of yeast to start with in YeastCalc). Seems to be working well so far.

I do this with every vial of White Labs that I get usually. Sometimes I'll run a 2L starter with the entire vial, split that, step up one half and then brew with it, and then split the other half again. Then I have two jars for two future batches plus a big starter for brew day.
 
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