Oh, really, Mr. Malty?

Hey guys
Just wondering if someone with a better grasp of yeast life cycles and whatnot can tell me if Mr. Malty's slurry viability calculations are pretty much correct? It seems like it drops to 10% pretty quickly. I think I harvested and stored it pretty well, although I believe it has wort on top of it and not distilled water. Just trying to get a feel for if that's pretty accurate or if he aims to err on the side of "add more yeast". Thanks.

it does drop quickly. the calculator in beer smith does the same thing. it seems like it'll stay at 90% then just drop down to 8%. I did a piss poor job of storing mine for 3 months (which is too long according to mr. malty) and i used it to make an ipa that got me high scores in the SA longshot contest. so it's not a real big deal

Hmm...thanks for the input. I kind of figured I'd get stories like that and I'm not gonna sweat it, but I do like to be able to shoot for a target pitch rate. Guess with harvested yeast I'll just do a starter and see what happens.

SenorPepe said:

Hmm...thanks for the input. I kind of figured I'd get stories like that and I'm not gonna sweat it, but I do like to be able to shoot for a target pitch rate. Guess with harvested yeast I'll just do a starter and see what happens.

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for harvested yeast, just step it up nice and easy. i just did a harvest from bell's amber. 4 bottles into 250ml wort 1.020, it was slow to start, but after it was done i cold crashed and pitched the slurry into 500ml of the same gravity and it kicked off right away. followed the same steps and pitched slurry into 500ml of 1.040 wort, took off like a rocket and i pitched that slurry into a 1500ml starter at 1.04. i'll either brew with that slurry or pitch it into one more 1500ml starter and use that for brewing.
hope that helps a little, no way to know the cell count or anything exact, but it gave me a nice layer of light colored yeast in the bottom of the flask like a starter should.