Another Starter Step Up Question?

I've been using MrMalty.com and his yeast pitching calculator, but there is one question that still puzzles me a little?

If you are making a 11 gallons of big beer (1.080ish?) using a stir plate it calls for something like almost a 1 gallon starter, which is huge. This i'm ok with, but what confuses me is that it calls for 2 vials of yeast?

Why do you need to vials, when 1 smack pack it enough to ferment out about 5 gallons of lighter beer, so I'm sure it would ferment out that 1 gallon starter.

Does it yield less yeast?

What if I pitched the vial into a half gallon, and then added another half gallon on to it? Does this produce more or less that 1 vial directly in 1 gallon.

Finally, what if I pitched the 1 vial into a half gallon, chilled, decanted, and then pitched into the 1 gallon?

I've read a lot and didn't find the specific answer to this question, sorry if I missed it.

Thanks

I'm curious about that as well.

I would use your last option, pitching into the half, then decant and repitch into the full gallon. That should give you about as much yeast as you'd get from the 2 called for. You might even want to do a full instead of a half first.

There are several things about the calculator that are a bit unclear. Even a contradiction of fundamental idea. In the write-up he claims that 25% of a slurry is yeast, in the calculator, you are able to choose up to 25% NON-yeast, but no more. What the heck?? It gets really hard to measure when you are working with ml volumes of slurry, and estimating cell counts. My solution is just to go bigger.

Anyway, when in doubt, pitch more. It's really hard to overpitch, especially a 1.080 wort.
Good luck and cheers

Budzu, I agree with you on over pitching and really appreciate the reply. Do you have any idea as to why option 3 actually produces more yeast?

I'm not sure that it would produce more yeast, but it is the more economical option than using 2 vials. And the yeast gets buffed up a bit Personally I buy one vial of white labs 001 and keep it going through 4 generations of 4 different recipes. 4-5 months on 1 vial for all my american ale recipes. At the fourth beer, which is usually close to your gravity, that yeast goes to town.
So yeah, couple of reasons why its good to give it a double starter. Anyway let me know what you go with and how it goes!

also, what if you decant and "step" to the same volume. In other words, if I make a two liter starter, then cold-crash it and decant off the liquid, then put in another 2L of fresh wort, does this boost cell count noticeably?

aarondrich said:

I've been using MrMalty.com and his yeast pitching calculator, but there is one question that still puzzles me a little?

If you are making a 11 gallons of big beer (1.080ish?) using a stir plate it calls for something like almost a 1 gallon starter, which is huge. This i'm ok with, but what confuses me is that it calls for 2 vials of yeast?

Why do you need to vials, when 1 smack pack it enough to ferment out about 5 gallons of lighter beer, so I'm sure it would ferment out that 1 gallon starter.

Does it yield less yeast?

What if I pitched the vial into a half gallon, and then added another half gallon on to it? Does this produce more or less that 1 vial directly in 1 gallon.

Finally, what if I pitched the 1 vial into a half gallon, chilled, decanted, and then pitched into the 1 gallon?

I've read a lot and didn't find the specific answer to this question, sorry if I missed it.

Thanks

Click to expand...

It's all about getting the yeast cell count up the target (with yeast health being paramount). 1 pack would be plenty to ferment out a 1 gal starter but you still wouldn't have enough yeast for your batch. Just like you said, it yields less yeast.

There are ways to play with the numbers in the calculator for stepped up starters. A couple of hints would be: make your first step just trying to increase your cell count so you don't need two vials/packs. Then when you step it up, use the 'Viability' box to enter your starting yeast cell count for the second step. That Viability box is really just displaying your starting yeast cell count in billions (that's because a fresh vial/pack is ~100 billion cells, so 67% is 67 billion cells and 200% is 200 billion cells). Yes, you can enter a percent greater than 100.

I am little bit confused obout starters, step ups and milions and bilions of cells... My beer have OG 1.046, batch size is 34 litres. And i have a one tube of white lab kolsch yeast whit experation date on 1 april 2014. Also have 2 litre flask and a stir plate.

So what are my options here to make a proper starter for these batch? I calculate with mr malty, but i am not shore how much cells i have in yeast... So what can i do with 2 litre flask, stirr plate and one tube of white lab yeast? Thanks!

While I don’t know exactly how many cells you will need, there are a couple of things to consider Virtus.

Some people make a starter and dump the whole thing into the fermentation vessel
Some people make a starter, let the yeast settle out, then pour off the liquid leaving a little liquid behind, slurry the yeast, measure and pour – this one is a little tricky because you can accidentally pour some of the yeast down the drain when you are trying to discard the beer that sits on top of it if you aren’t careful. (the trick as I’ve found is to pour in one smooth motion because the moment you hesitate and the beer sloshes back, the yeast easily becomes disturbed and you lose separation and must slurry whatever is in there.)

The deciding factor between method one and two is usually revolving around the fact that your starter is just DME and water, do you want 1L of that in every 5 gallons of your beer? Depending on how that strikes you you may decide to go with method 2.

The ‘problem’ with method 2 is the variability in how much beer you leave in the starter to slurry the yeast. It becomes important to recognize color and turbidity without a microscope.

From the book about yeast by the white labs guy…
“The entire volume of the vial is 47mL.. average fill level of 36mL. After the vial has sat upright and steady for a good long time, the yeast packs down into the bottom portion of the vial, about 14mL of space. Once that happens, the yeast (excluding the liquid above it) is at a very high density, somewhere around 8 billion cells per mL. If you shake the vial, so the yeast mixes evenly into the liquid, it will have a density of 3 billion cells per mL. If you mix the vial with an additional 16mL of water you now have an idea what 2 billion cells per mL of slurry looks like. Add 50 more milliliters and that is a 1 billion/milliliter slurry”

Getting familiar with the visual thickness of your yeast slurry is to me one of the key things in being able to hit your target since there is much room for variability when dealing in 100s of billions. I say that because someone my post next that you need 320billion cells, and that that’s approximately 470mL of yeast slurry, but then if you’re slurry is too thin you won’t get your 320 billion. And the only way to know if your slurry is too thin is to know how to visually recognize it and perhaps to weigh it.

“many commercial breweries pitch based on weight. For some volumes of yeast this can be considerably easier to measure. Each yeast cell weighs around 8 x 10 (to the -11th), so 100 billion cells only weigh about 8 grams without any liquid for the slurry. Depending on Several factors, a density of 2 billion cells per mL weighs in the ballpark of 1.02g/mL (water weighs 1 g/mL and yeast 1.087 g/mL).”

Finally I’d add that pure yeast (like in your vial) is well, purer than fermented yeast. Meaning, once you do your starter, err to the higher end of the ranges recommended for your beer since a) it’s tough to overpitch and b) some of the ‘yeast’ isn’t yeast.

Peace,
Cris

Thanks for so extensive message. My starter is 200g DME, two litre of water and one tube white lab yeast. All goes in one 50 litre vessel, not two 5 gallons carboy. I just want to know whan is the best option to do with these what i have? I thinking to reduce batch to 30 litres, than i wouldn't wory so much if there is enough cell with 2 litre starter.

Then here's what I'd do.

Let the starter go for two days then put it in the fridge for two. Then carefully pour off the liquid being careful not do disturb the yeast in the bottom. and boil another 2L of starter and chill to fermentation temp. Add that to the yeast and let it go for two days again. At that point I'd be willing to bet you'd have enough cells for your 1.046.

There's a general rule that the count will double every day (roughly and I may be off) depending on oxygen and temp. Swirl the starter often to increase o2 exposure.

What kind of beer?

MeBrew2 said:

Then here's what I'd do.

Let the starter go for two days then put it in the fridge for two. Then carefully pour off the liquid being careful not do disturb the yeast in the bottom. and boil another 2L of starter and chill to fermentation temp. Add that to the yeast and let it go for two days again. At that point I'd be willing to bet you'd have enough cells for your 1.046.

There's a general rule that the count will double every day (roughly and I may be off) depending on oxygen and temp. Swirl the starter often to increase o2 exposure.

What kind of beer?

Click to expand...

Yes, this is what i need! It is kolsch. Thanks.

Measure the yeast slurry based on what your research shows the pitch rate should be.

And the post I made above about visuals.

You'll probably have some leftover yeast!