Mr. Malty calculation???

OK. I hate to be driving the knowledgeable forum nuts, but, I started a thread the other day regarding yeast starters. I am more confused than when I started. I am going to be making a Tripel which cost a fair amount of $. Therefore, I want to get this right. This will be my 3rd attempt at brewing. According to Mr. Malty, I will need to make 4.61 liters of starter using 1 smack pack of Wyeast. This for a 1.080 OG beer. This sounds huge considering the amount of yeast I used in my prior two brews (American Ale and a Cinook IPA). Is the whole 4.61 liters pitched? Or is just the slurry? Thanks for your patience.

Just the slurry man. That other "beer" is a gallon of crap that would kill your perfectly good Tripel. I would start it at 1ltr, step to 2ltr, step to 4 ltr, chill overnight, bring to room temp. on brew day and decant the liquid. You could leave a little bit of the liquid as that is gonna be alot of yeast, or throw a little purified water or wort in there to swirl.

In the middle of the calculator there is a pulldown menu to select the type of starter. You chose simple starter, which is put the yeast in the vessel and leave it alone till it is done. You could cut the amount back drastically with a stir plate, but if you don't have one, even stopping by the starter as often as you can and picking it up and swirling it about allows you to go to the intermittent shaking pull down which only requires 2.7 liters

I agree with quigsnshad that with a starter that large you are probably better off just pitching the slurry. That said, using steps that small (doubling at each step, rather than 5-10 times) can actually hurt yeast health unless the additions of wort are timed perfectly. I would just make up the 2.7 liter starter that zen_brew talked about, shake it as often as you can (bring it to work with you!) and then chill, decant, swirl and pitch. Just make sure that the yeast have a good 12-24 hours after it appears to be done fermenting so that they can rebuild their glycogen stores.

If you can get a copy of the latest Zymurgy magazine, Jamil has a good column about starters in there. This is also a good resource:

http://www.homebrewersassociation.org/attachments/0000/1235/MAzym07_YeastStarter.pdf