I am confused about starters and starter calculators.

NcBrewer35 said:

So I just took my count and it looks like I am falling in between Jamil & Braukaiser. I have 7.3 Billion cells in my 110ml starter.

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was that for a 10 Plato wort? I'm surprised you saw a growth of only 0.7 B/g. When I start from slant my 3rd stage is usually 200-300 ml 10 Plato wort which gives me on the order of 50 B cells on the stir plate.

Kai

WoodlandBrew said:

For what it's worth, my experience is that a 1 liter to 2 liter stepped starter produces the same number of cells as one 3 liter starter.

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I will yield on this, as I've not done the actual experimentation, but only done the reading. 'Field' work trumps theory work any day.

I just dissolve 1/2lb of light DME into 1600mL of water, cool, pitch, and put it on the stir plate with a foil lid for 48 hours. For 90% of my brews this works out perfectly fine.

MagicSmoker said:

Okay - that makes sense, too. Still, there are many recent posts here saying you need to do step up starters for a garden variety 5gal of 1.060 wort. I'm really getting into the nuances involved in making beer, but let's face it: at some point this stops being fun and starts being work...

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Yeah usually when I have to bottle.

MagicSmoker said:

Interesting... So pitching ~100B cells to 1L of 1.040 wort is going to result in lots of aerobic growth and very little alcohol production, while pitching the same number of cells to 4L of 1.040 wort may result in some anaerobic growth (ie - beer production) as well? Is the concern about this because the "beer" produced won't taste too good, or more because the yeast will have switched metabolic pathways from aerobic to anaerobic and therefore be less prepared to be pitched into well-oxygenated wort?

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Honestly? I'm not sure, it could be because you can only get so much O2 into the wort, or some other limiter. And that things like O2 is used both for sterol production (I think it is sterol/cell walls) and for energy production. It could be as the ratio of starter volume to starting cells grows larger, that more O2 and other nutrients go to yeast life over yeast reproduction. - and I'm guessing here. But that is my guess and I'm sticking by it until someone else corrects me :cross:

I don't know about the OP, but I sure found this thread helpful...

My LHBS just has 1L flasks so I bought a couple, with the intent of doing starters and some stovetop "single bottle" tests. Then I saw that blog post by Bertus Brewery about dry hopping Bud Light to test different hops and hop combos and decided that looked a lot easier/speedier.

Kaiser said:

was that for a 10 Plato wort? I'm surprised you saw a growth of only 0.7 B/g. When I start from slant my 3rd stage is usually 200-300 ml 10 Plato wort which gives me on the order of 50 B cells on the stir plate.

Kai

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Thanks for the response Kai, I am using a 9 plato wort and I only let the starter go for 24 hours. Could this be the reason I only saw that much growth? I have not seen any of the calculators out there giving recommended times for starters.

When I pitched the 7 billion cells into a 1100ml starter I only had 59 billion cells after 24 hours. How long do you keep your starters going before stepping them up?

For what its worth I went from a slant to 15ml of wort and had 27.5 million (.275 billion) From here I stepped up to 110ml of wort and ended with the 7 billion cells. From here I pitched into 1100 ml of wort and ended with 58.8 billion cells which I cold crashed for a day and then decanted spent wort and pitched last night into 3000ml of wort.. All of these steps went for 24 hours before I stepped them up.

24 hrs may not be long enough, depending on the temperature. I always let my starters go for 48 hrs until the kraeusen is gone.

Kai