Triple Starter

Is in it's 1L stage!!! Tomorrow is the 2L stage and then Tuesday night is the cold crash for a 15 gallon Brew Day on Wednesday!!!!

1 = WLP885 Platinum Zurich Lager

2 = WLP800 Pilsner Lager

3 = WLP920 Old Bavarian Lager

All three were Slanted (eight slants each) so I should have PLENTY of whichever one tastes the best in 9 or so weeks....

I just showed my wife this post and said "See honey, I'm not that bad!" I would love to have three stir-plates or even a nice work area like you have for brewing. How big is your fermentation chamber/fridge if you're doing three lagers at the same time?

The stir plates are $42.00 each on homebrewstuff.com (cheap). The work area is a $50 laminate counter top from Lowe's on top of half sized shelving unit (as in you can build it fairly cheap and the laminate can be sanitized!).

I use a chest freezer with temp controller that can fit exactly three 5 gallon buckets as primaries. Then I have a larger chest freezer that can fit exactly six 6 gallon carboys for the lagering stage. Then keg them in cornelius kegs and into the old converted refrigerator (shelves removed and wooden bottom built full length/width. Fits 4 soda kegs with some extra space on the side.

Space is a premium for me..... I'm kind of excited to move back to the msinland

Stepped up to 2L per starter and I'm attempting the FOAM stoppers from Austin Homebrew - fully sanitized with OneStep - awesome idea compared to aluminum foil. WOW that WL Zurich Lager is flocculating like a BEAST in there!!! It's basically blowing yeast chunks!

Looks like number 1 is done.

That is the White Labs Zurich lager yeast - it was flocculating like that within 2 hours on the 1L starter and in that photo had only been on the 2L starter for 10 minutes.

Cool--same strain as S-189, which I found to be sluggish in the first generation but great in the second.

This vial was a BEAST in both the 1L (1st gen) and 2L (2nd gen) starters... And it was dated Best By 2/14/2012 but just put into service 3/4/2012. And dang that stuff stores up some CO2 in the vial - it sprayed all over when I cracked the vial open...

Wait, your 1L starter and 2L starters looked to have quite a bit less than that volume filled with starter+yeast. if I have a 1L flask filled to 500 mL I'd call it a 500 mL starter, not a 1L starter. Have I misunderstood something along the way?

Nope! The recipe I use is a 1.020 starter - roughly 2oz of DME to 800 ml of H2O. Gives the yeast a run for their money in the anaerobic stages of their life - as in they flocculate a little better... Less food means more competition (see the National Geographic Channel for more info on this concept - LOL). Only 800ml +/- 50ml in the flask leaves some space above the mix for CO2/O2 mixing and absorption. Fill it to the top and you don't have that opportunity.