Giant Starter?

My partner and I just lost most of our brew in a major apartment fire. : (

We're trying to get up and going again as quickly as possible. We had just made the transition to liquid yeast and partial mash brewing. I want to redo a couple of the batches we lost and have come up with a potential cost and time saving plan. Hoping for some feedback:

We are planning on doing the BYO Yeti clone, plus something else that uses Wyeast 1056. The Yeti requires a 3 L starter. Whatever else we'd do (probably a strong IPA) would have a similar OG (probably 1.070-ish). In the name of convenience, we are going to pound out a Festa Brew kit as well, probably a cream ale.

It occurred to be that since the Festa Brew cream comes with Safale US-05, I could just replace it with the Wyeast 1056 I was planning on buying for the Yeti, run it through primary, and then repitch the harvested yeast in my two partial match brews. This would have the advantage of eliminating the starter stage (basically making the Festa Brew a giant starter), allow me to harvest lots of clean yeast from the primary (no trub in pre-packaged wort), and probably improve the cream ale at the same time (by using a liquid instead of the dry yeast).

My only concern is the difference in OG between the cream ale (1.0476) and the Yeti (1.090). Will this be a problem (too stressful a leap for the yeast)? Is there anything else I am missing here that might make this a bad idea?

Thanks for your feedback!

Jason

IF it were me I would do it in the opposite order. Do a low OG batch first, then pitch the Yeti on top of that. The yeast will reproduce a lot by fermenting thru a batch. Then you won't have to do as large of a starter (if at all) for the high OG beer.

Sorry, mosquitocontrol, maybe I wasn't clear enough. That's what I am planning on doing: brewing the Festa Brew cream ale (low OG packaged wort) with the liquid yeast I would otherwise be using for the two high gravity beers, and then harvesting off of the cream ale's cake and repitching to the Yeti and IPA. I figured this would allow me to skip a starter entirely, since I would essentially be using the cream ale as one giant starter. Just checking to make sure there was no obvious problem with this plan.

Sounds good...being a cheapskate, I would go one step farther and use the S-05 with the kit instead of buying a smack pack of 1056. From what I understand, its the same yeast and it's included in your CA kit.

I know you have transitioned to using liquid yeasts and all that, but here you may just as well save your self some effort and use the dry yeast. The big benefit of liquid yeast is the selection; here that really isn't an issue.

My 0.02

Thanks a lot for the help!

Jason

Reusing yeast is one of my favorite cost saving techniques. Just make sure that you are stepping up the OG each time you reuse it.

bknifefight said:

Reusing yeast is one of my favorite cost saving techniques. Just make sure that you are stepping up the OG each time you reuse it.

Click to expand...

...and always go from lighter beers to darker beers....

or wash your yeast.