Brew a small beer or step up starters?

If you want to build up a lot of yeast for a large batch of high gravity beer, I can see two potential options:

1. Brew a small beer and pitch on yeast cake.

2. Do controlled starters and step up continuously until you hit your desired number.

I have been doing a lot of step up starters recently and it is always disappointing to decant off the starter wort (which does not smell/taste good). I would much rather have a small batch of good tasting beer and then use it's leftover yeast to make a bigger beer.

So my real question is:

Is yeast from a starter healthier than yeast from a brewed beer? Or in other words does highly over pitched/non hopped beers (I.e. Starters) produce a higher quality yeast with easier to predict growth rates.

I'm considering changing my brewing rotation to make a small batch session beer followed by a full batch of higher gravity. For example, I would make 3 gallons of ordinary bitter, save the yeast and pitch it into a 10 gallon batch of ESB. Do you think the quality of my ESB will be lesser than if I just built up that yeast with starters.

FWIW, I don't think yeast washing is a good idea, so I would only pitch yeast that was very recently harvested (I.e. Fresh yeast cake, not stored for more than 5 days).


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a yeast starter is no better or worse than the small beer method.

"The size ratio of one step to the next can affect the health of the yeast and the amount of cell growth. A very large step can result in a change in yeast metabolism, where the sugars that are fermented last can fall out of favor with the yeast. The yeast become lazy and subsequent generations can become lower attenuating."


I copied this from Mr Malty. I infer from it that the ratio of wort to yeast impacts yeast health, but I do not understand why and/or how critical.


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As long as you start with an appropriate pitch rate and have a healthy fermentation., I don't believe that there is any reason to think an immediate repitch from a small beer would be in any way inferior to a fresh starter. Oxygenating well and a nutrient addition at flameout can't hurt either

Agreed, starting with an appropriate pitch rate is very important. Chris White and Jamil Z's book, 'Yeast,' has a nice table documenting yeast growth in different sized starters going all the way up to 20L (just over 5 gallons!) using 100g DME per L water - which I think achieves a gravity of around 1.040 so if you were brewing a pretty low gravity beer, like you say you are thinking, pitching a vial/smack pack of yeast would be like making a great big starter.

So after further reading, I think if you properly rinse yeast cake, and get rid of dead yeast cells, trub and any other unwanted material, then you can have equivalent yeast to a starter. You'll definitely have more dead yeast in a small beer, but I'm still not sure if that should be a concern. I wonder if a rinsing step can cause more harm then leaving that dead yeast in there.

I realize you can make good beer either way, but trying to understand how post fermentation yeast behaves at different pitching rates and why.


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dermotstratton said:

So after further reading, I think if you properly rinse yeast cake, and get rid of dead yeast cells, trub and any other unwanted material, then you can have equivalent yeast to a starter. You'll definitely have more dead yeast in a small beer, but I'm still not sure if that should be a concern. I wonder if a rinsing step can cause more harm then leaving that dead yeast in there.

I realize you can make good beer either way, but trying to understand how post fermentation yeast behaves at different pitching rates and why.


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Click to expand...

why do you think the yeast would be dead as opposed to just going dormant after fermentation is complete? rinsing yeast is a hotly debated issue here but i see it as an added complication with zero benefit over just repitching the yeast slurry.

When I do my Barleywine with WLP007, I'm going to make a 4 gallon 1.050 SMaSH PA as the yeast starter.