Yeast Starter Question

Hey everyone! Sorry for the newb question, but here goes. I'm planning to make a starter tonight for a brewday on Saturday (day after tomorrow). I harvested and washed some WLP001 on March 26th. Mr. Malty says that I will need 194 ML. I haven't used Mr. Malty before, and this will be my first time making a starter. My question is, does the 194 ML mean I will need to pitch that much (into the wort) after my starter is done, or is that how much of the settled yeast I need to put into my starter?
Thanks so much for your help!!

That is the amount of yeast (in ml) you need to pitch in your 5.25gal batch of wort

It's a 194ml of yeast slurry from your harvest that needs to be pitched in your new batch. Your jars only contain a small percentage of actual slurry. Just decant one of the jars and use the washed yeast to make a good size starter as originally planned.

Thanks so much. Do you think one jar of slurry will be enough to make the starter with, or should I use two? I will be brewing a 5 gal. batch.

What is your target OG?

For an average gravity beer I would start by making a 32oz/1000ml starter. Let that fermentent out, decant and use that to make a 64oz/2000ml starter.

I've been using 10grams LME:100ml of water for starters. It ferments out in a day or two and the yeast drops pretty quick. I use a 1000ml and 2000ml flask but the actual volume of the starter is about 80% to give some head room.

As BeerKrump mentioned there are some factors that will make a difference including your OG.

Once you know your OG and Batch size you can calculate how many Yeast cells you will need to pitch into your cooled wort. This is basically what Mr. Malty will give you when you plug in your numbers. From there you will need to work backwards to get to this amount.

Other factors that will make a difference will be whether or not you are using a stir plate or just occaisionallly shaking the Jar or whatever you have your starter in. This will make a difference in how much reproduction you will get from your original washed yeast. You can also plug this stuff into Mr. Malty by changing a few tabs and it should tell you how big of a starter you will need and how many vials to start with. (Vial = Approx 100 ml of Yeast).

If you give me some more details I would be happy to tell you exactly what I would do.

Thanks everyone. I do not have a stir plate, so I will be swirling/shaking the flask. My target OG for this beer will be 1.050

something to consider...

Mr Malty talks about the apparent thickness of the yeast in your container (thin vs thick slurry). I've always assumed that "thin" would be slurry straight from the cake and "thick" would be more like a White Labs vial... If that's true, then the OP would only need 214ml of yeast from the mason jars. Now, the conversion is 1 US quart = 946ml. or, he'd need ~ 1/4 of his mason jar. As a result, there's no starter required...

If you want to awaken the yeast, make a small activator the morning of your brew session (much like a Wyeast smack pack). Make a 1030 starter (very small) and pour your yeast in. Do it just like a starter and the yeast will get active and start working. Pour the whole thing into your wort when ready.

the no starter required makes sense since the cake is the total yeast from another brew... should have more than required for the next beer.

Looks like there's roughly 1 fl oz (30 mL) split between both jars. Since it's a packed, rinsed slurry at this point and the viability's probably around 50%, you'll have 60-75 billion cells, give or take. Treat it like a smack pack.

ThePearsonFam said:

the OP would only need 214ml of yeast from the mason jars.

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That jar is less than 10% actual yeast slurry. The other 90%+ is water from the washing. And if I had to bet, that's a half quart jar. That leaves less than 50ml of slurry.

My 1050 hefe produced enough slurry (without washing) to (roughly) fill a bit more than one mason jar. I washed it and poured into another mason jar. It had ~ the same number of cells as the original slurry. I just set the calculator to "Thin" to accomodate. If that's true for the OP's wash, then he'd only need half the mason jar. If you let the washed slurry settle in a cold crash, it'll compact way down, more than I expected.

I'm trying to figure out the details on the calculator myself. The starter portion is easy but he repitch from slurry isn't so easy. I've had great luck but am always trying to refine my process.

I just found this: http://www.mrmalty.com/calc/repitch.html

Explains a bit more...

Yeast Concentration billion/ml
- This setting allows you to adjust for how thick a slurry you're measuring. If you've ever seen the yeast packed hard into the bottom of a White Labs vial, that is Thick Yeast at 4.5 billion cells per ml. When you harvest a yeast slurry and it has settled for a few hours, that is a thin slurry. Usually, most homebrewers will let their yeast settle for a few days in the fridge between one batch and the next. When you do, you'll notice the yeast has settled a bit and is sort of jelly-like. That is the default setting on the calculator. You'll need to estimate from there for other yeast thickness, but what is most important is keeping track of what you pitched and the results you get from the beer. If you need to adjust up or down, that is OK, just keep track of how you do things each time.
- Once you've determined how much yeast you have in the container, you can shake the container along with any liquid to loosen up the yeast. If you determine there is 200 ml of yeast solids in the container and you want to pitch 100 ml. Shake the container to break up the yeast and then pour 1/2 of this very loose yeast slurry into your beer.

ryanpaulnorris said:

Thanks everyone. I do not have a stir plate, so I will be swirling/shaking the flask. My target OG for this beer will be 1.050

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OK, based on 1.05 and 5G batch here is how I figure it. I am sure there are some who will disagree but this is what I would do.

Mr. Malty tells you that for 5G at 1.05 you will need 175 billion yeast cells. Based solely on looking at your jars I would guess that you have about 15-20 ML in each jar. Mason Jars will have 100 ML markers. I assume that 1 ML of rinsed yeast will have between 4-4.5 billion cells per ML (from "Yeast"). A simple starter that is shaken intermitently over a 24-48 hr period should approximately double the yeast count from start to finish.

So to come up with 175 Billion cells you would need to start with approx 88 billion cells or 20-22 ML of yeast. I would use a 1000ML starter with 100 grams of DME.

If I am off on anything feel free to let me know. I am somewhat new to the yeast game but have done plenty of homework on it. If you intend to get further into this I would definitely recommend "Yeast" by Chris White and Jamil Z. Awesome book!!

Also if you plan to keep washing yeast and making starters I would either buy a stirplate for about $45 bucks or search for some DIY threads on it. It is pretty simple and straight forward. A stir plate will take your starter from simply doubling the cell count of you intial yeast up to 3-5 times the initial amount. So in your case if you had a stir plate you would only need 13-15 ML of yeast to start instead of 20-22.

Any experts care to weigh in on my thoughts or numbers?

br1dge said:

OK, based on 1.05 and 5G batch here is how I figure it. I am sure there are some who will disagree but this is what I would do.

Mr. Malty tells you that for 5G at 1.05 you will need 175 billion yeast cells. Based solely on looking at your jars I would guess that you have about 15-20 ML in each jar. Mason Jars will have 100 ML markers. I assume that 1 ML of rinsed yeast will have between 4-4.5 billion cells per ML (from "Yeast"). A simple starter that is shaken intermitently over a 24-48 hr period should approximately double the yeast count from start to finish.

So to come up with 175 Billion cells you would need to start with approx 88 billion cells or 20-22 ML of yeast. I would use a 1000ML starter with 100 grams of DME.

If I am off on anything feel free to let me know. I am somewhat new to the yeast game but have done plenty of homework on it. If you intend to get further into this I would definitely recommend "Yeast" by Chris White and Jamil Z. Awesome book!!

Also if you plan to keep washing yeast and making starters I would either buy a stirplate for about $45 bucks or search for some DIY threads on it. It is pretty simple and straight forward. A stir plate will take your starter from simply doubling the cell count of you intial yeast up to 3-5 times the initial amount. So in your case if you had a stir plate you would only need 13-15 ML of yeast to start instead of 20-22.

Any experts care to weigh in on my thoughts or numbers?

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I'm no expert on yeast slurry but I wouldn't let the starter go for more than 36 hours. After that, the yeast will feed on themselves to keep up their glycogen reserves.

I have to be missing something...

If those two mason jars hold ALL the yeast from one cake, then there has to be more than 20ml of 4.5B cells per jar. Do the math on that... If that's the case, then the WHOLE slurry only has:
20ml * 2 (for 2 jars) * 4.5B/ml = 180B cells from a whole yeast cake???

That's CAN'T be true, otherwise we'd be siphoning wort right onto our yeast cake from the last batch. We know that's not the case.

A yeast cake of an average beer can have close to 1T cells when it's done, so, if you needed 220ml of starter (on thin in the calc) for a 1050 beer, then that's ~ 1/4 of the yeast cake. If that's true, and (again) the entire slurry is contained in those two jars, then 1/4 of the total volume or 1/2 of the mason jar (shaken up) is the correct pitching rate.

Those two jars don't contain the entire amount of yeast from the cake. After washing, I ended up with 4 jars. I was just wondering if I should use 1 or 2 of the jars of yeast to make my starter. In reviewing other yeast washing threads, it looked like some people came away with more settled yeast in their mason jars than I did.
I made my starter last night with 1000ml of 1.035 'wort' (Thanks for the advice, br1dge!). I decanted and pitched both of the jars shown in my first post. Since I do not have a stir plate, I've just been trying to shake/swirl the flask as often as I can. No sign of fermentation in there yet, but I'll give it through the rest of the day to prove to me that it's alive. Will keep you posted.

Sounds good to me. It will take a little bit to do its thing but should start turning a lighter color. You may not see any Krausen but that doesnt mean the Yeast arent working. Are you brewing Sat? If so I would probably throw the starter in the fridge tonight and then decant and pitch Sat. Happy Brewing!!

I am brewing Saturday. Thanks for all of the advice, everyone. I'll let you know in 3-4 days if the yeast is doing it's job in my beer or not. I'm feeling pretty hopefull. Thanks again.

How do you know how much DME to use when making your yeast starter?

marrty24 said:

How do you know how much DME to use when making your yeast starter?

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10grams DME:100ml water is the best way I know to figure it out. This will actually yield close to a 1.040 so I'll use 8 grams to 100ml water for around a 1.030 gravity. I'll use 10 grams for LME:100ml to get close to the same gravity.

UPDATE:
Looks like the starter was a success! I've got a nice, vigorous fermentation going now. Thanks for all of your help, everyone!

Thats the nice thing about pitching a good amount of yeast. Dont even have to wait 3-4 days. Now its more like 4-24 hrs. I try pitch my starters at about 18-24 hrs on a stir plate and they go crazy. Blow off tube is always a good idea as well.

Congrats on the successful brew. Let us know how it turns out.