question. has anyone used yeastcalc to calculate how much slurry to pitch instead of mr. malty?
i normally go with what mr. malty tells me, but after looking at yeastcalc for a bit, it occurred to me that i could harvest all of the yeast out of fermentor, look at yeastcalcs final cell numbers, and split the harvested slurry into equal parts to get the amount of cells i need for my next batch.
so this is what i did for my last batch. i brewed a 5.5 gallon 1.036 english bitter with a pack of 1968 dated august 15th. i normally would have made a starter, but this time i figured i would wing it, so i let the pack swell for a few hours and direct pitched it. it was calculated to around 53% viability, so about 53 billion cells. after the 5.5 gallons of beer is fermented, yeastcalc estimates 350b cells total. so instead of going with the 100ml mmrmalty suggestion, i just pitched half of the total harvested slurry into my 1.047 esb, which should be just right.
the total harvested slurry was about 1/2 gallon, so 1/4 gallon went back into my beer. it was straight out of the fermentor, so trub was included.
so i guess i am just wondering if my thinking is correct here. i always thought of mrmalty as sort of a crap shoot for estimating slurry amounts due to trub, thin or thick yeast, etc, and it really doesnt factor the total cell count in the slurry you are using which might make it worse yet if i am thinking about this right.
i normally go with what mr. malty tells me, but after looking at yeastcalc for a bit, it occurred to me that i could harvest all of the yeast out of fermentor, look at yeastcalcs final cell numbers, and split the harvested slurry into equal parts to get the amount of cells i need for my next batch.
so this is what i did for my last batch. i brewed a 5.5 gallon 1.036 english bitter with a pack of 1968 dated august 15th. i normally would have made a starter, but this time i figured i would wing it, so i let the pack swell for a few hours and direct pitched it. it was calculated to around 53% viability, so about 53 billion cells. after the 5.5 gallons of beer is fermented, yeastcalc estimates 350b cells total. so instead of going with the 100ml mmrmalty suggestion, i just pitched half of the total harvested slurry into my 1.047 esb, which should be just right.
the total harvested slurry was about 1/2 gallon, so 1/4 gallon went back into my beer. it was straight out of the fermentor, so trub was included.
so i guess i am just wondering if my thinking is correct here. i always thought of mrmalty as sort of a crap shoot for estimating slurry amounts due to trub, thin or thick yeast, etc, and it really doesnt factor the total cell count in the slurry you are using which might make it worse yet if i am thinking about this right.
