Can I make a 1 vial starter for 12 gallon batch?

I want to make a starter for a 12 gallon batch but only have 1 vial of yeast. Can I make a 3 liter starter, pitch one vial of yeast into it, split it and pitch it into 2 fermentation buckets 24 hours later?

You would need to determine the proper amount of yeast to pitch based off of the recipe and by visiting http://www.mrmalty.com/calc/calc.html. By the process you have stated, I doubt you would get the proper amount, but without knowing the recipe, who knows. The best option would be to step-up a starter. By doing that, you wouldn't have to pitch a whole 3 liters, and you would end up with more yeast.

Edit: However, you can make a starter with just 1 vial, and you could do the 3 liter starter that you originally said. But by stepping up a starter, you can take that one vial, and make it into the amount of 10 vials if you wanted to go that high.

If your gravity is 1.055, you would have to make a 14 liter starter. Be sure to decant that sucker!

Step up for sure would be the way to go.

I'm not pitching 3 liters - I'd split it into two 1.5 liter starters (which I think is pretty normal) to pitch into 5 gallon fermentors. The beer is a 1.050 blonde ale with wlp 001 cali yeast

whats the proper way to step up and how long would it take me?

What's the gravity? Larger or Ale?

It would be under-pitching, but I think you could get away with it in a 1.055 ale. I would make a liter starter, decant, then make a 3 liter starter.

It depends. Ale or lager, and what is your target original gravity? The Mr. Malty calculator is a good tool to determine the amount of yeast you need to pitch for a healthy ferment.

beninan said:

The best option would be to step-up a starter. By doing that, you wouldn't have to pitch a whole 3 liters, and you would end up with more yeast.

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I'm a little confused as to what you mean here. I didn't think there was any difference in total volume with a step-up starter. I thought stepping up a starter just meant doubling the volume of wort at each stage, which is easier on the yeast than shocking it into a high amount of wort all at once... but in the end you still have the same amount of starter.

Can you clarify?

jigidyjim said:

I'm a little confused as to what you mean here. I didn't think there was any difference in total volume with a step-up starter. I thought stepping up a starter just meant doubling the volume of wort at each stage, which is easier on the yeast than shocking it into a high amount of wort all at once... but in the end you still have the same amount of starter.

Can you clarify?

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I've always known a step-up as making a starter, letting it ferment out, cold crash to settle out the yeast, pour out the "beer" on top, and create another starter with the yeast, and repeat the process.

When you add more wort to a starter (say you started with 1 liter, fermented it out, and poured another liter into it with the same gravity as the original 1 liter or starter), from what I'm aware of, the yeast really does not have to work at all to ferment that additional 1 liter. For easy numbers, lets say the first liter of wort had a gravity of 1.050, and it ferments to 1.000. When you pour an additional liter of 1.050 wort on top, now the yeast is only fermenting 2 liters with a gravity of 1.025, and the yeast growth may not be very great at that second stage. By the way, I've had a lot to drink tonight, because I have to work tomorrow, and drinking before work is a requirement.

This helps to explain a bit. http://billybrew.com/stepping-up-a-yeast-starter

beninan said:

I've always known a step-up as making a starter, letting it ferment out, cold crash to settle out the yeast, pour out the "beer" on top, and create another starter with the yeast, and repeat the process.

When you add more wort to a starter (say you started with 1 liter, fermented it out, and poured another liter into it with the same gravity as the original 1 liter or starter), from what I'm aware of, the yeast really does not have to work at all to ferment that additional 1 liter. For easy numbers, lets say the first liter of wort had a gravity of 1.050, and it ferments to 1.000. When you pour an additional liter of 1.050 wort on top, now the yeast is only fermenting 2 liters with a gravity of 1.025, and the yeast growth may not be very great at that second stage. By the way, I've had a lot to drink tonight, because I have to work tomorrow, and drinking before work is a requirement.

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I'm pretty sure you are supposed to decant the fermented wort, then double the amount of wort you put in last time. So you're still only fermenting 1.050, but due to the larger volume, you produce more yeast.

Your earlier post made it sound like you can make a smaller volume starter by stepping it up, but I'm still not sure how that's possible.

jigidyjim said:

I'm pretty sure you are supposed to decant the fermented wort, then double the amount of wort you put in last time. So you're still only fermenting 1.050, but due to the larger volume, you produce more yeast.

Your earlier post made it sound like you can make a smaller volume starter by stepping it up, but I'm still not sure how that's possible.

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Oh, I watched the video. I wasn't aware that pitching the same volume of wort a second time would help raise the yeast count - I thought the yeast count stayed the same. Interesting. Pretty much everything else I've read here is about stepping up the volume of the starter, not just using the same volume more than once. I'll have to try that out and see how it works!

jigidyjim said:

I'm pretty sure you are supposed to decant the fermented wort, then double the amount of wort you put in last time. So you're still only fermenting 1.050, but due to the larger volume, you produce more yeast.

Your earlier post made it sound like you can make a smaller volume starter by stepping it up, but I'm still not sure how that's possible.

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My first post was intended to be worded to say that you can have more yeast in a lesser amount of a starter by stepping up, compared to the amount of yeast in single-fermentation 3 liter starter.

The video I linked explains it very well. One example of stepping up in the video, you can make a 2 liter starter with 1 vial and step it up to create a final starter of only 2 liters, with the amount of 3 vials of yeast.

Edit: Ah you posted before me. The way that you were talking about with stepping up starters is what I had initially thought too; double the volume=double the yeast. But like explained in the video, you can make a smaller starter and ultimately have more yeast in relation to wort volume.... i think...or something like that...

Despite everything I'm reading here this morning I went ahead and made a 3 liter starter. My reasoning was fairly simple. Long before I ever made starters I was simply pouring a vial of yeast directly into 5.5 gallons of wort and making pretty good beer. With that in mind I figured that pitching a vial of yeast into a 3 liter starter has to be a whole lot more healthy for the cells than my previous method.

Hopefully what I'll get is enough active healthy, woken up cells without completely under pitching going this route. My grist is 18.5 lbs of 2 row, 2 lbs of vienna, and 8 oz of caramel 10 so there's no specialty grains. It's a very simple 1.050 beer.

You'll be fine. Assuming you have a really fresh vial, and intermittent shaking of your starter vessel, with a 3L starter you'll get about 300 billion cells. That's roughly 70% of Mr. Malty's optimal recommended amount.