Stepping up a starter

I need to make a 4L starter for a brown ale with an OG of 1.060 (according to Mr Malty) since my yeast vial is a little old.

My flask only holds 2L, so I made a 2L starter on Sunday night and this morning the yeast had flocculated out so I put the starter in the fridge so I can decant.

When I decant, can I add another 2L of fresh starter wort to the flask to make the equivalent yeast quantity that a 4L starter would have given me?

Originally I thought this would be the case, but then I thought that since there is so much yeast in the flask now, the yeast may not need to reproduce in order to munch through the new sugars, which would mean feeding them again would be a waste of time and money.

I'd appreciate your thoughts!

Use yeastcalc.com to figure out the sizes you need. Chances are, the total size of the two starters will be less than if you did one large starter.

There will be too much yeast in the flask. What you can do is put the newer yeast in a mason jar and take about 20ml from that and put it in a new 2l starter.

It depends on inoculation rate, doubling up your starter size wont necessary double finish cells number.
Play with yeastcalc and I"m sure you"ll figure it out.

4L for a 60 point batch? Is this because you're not using a stir plate? They're super easy to make, I built one for less than 20 bucks recycling a computer fan and a gameboy power supply

HopOnHops said:

4L for a 60 point batch? Is this because you're not using a stir plate? They're super easy to make, I built one for less than 20 bucks recycling a computer fan and a gameboy power supply

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This is a good point.

If calculating the required starter size using "a simple starter", a much bigger starter is required than "intermittent shaking", "adding O2 at start", or using a stir plate.

So if you pitch your yeast in the starter and just let it sit, ya, you'll need 4L but if you use one of the other methods(even intemittent shaking) you could cut that in half.

NWMushroom said:

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My flask only holds 2L, so I made a 2L starter on Sunday night and this morning the yeast had flocculated out so I put the starter in the fridge so I can decant.
!

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Remember how much yeast(by volume) that was in the pack/vial.
At 100% viability, that's 100billion cells. If you had 50% viability and used a 2L starter you roughly doubled it, so now you're back to 100B cells approximatley. If,(by volume) that is way more than the original volume, there is alot of other stuff in there besides yeast cells. So, IMHO, add 2L of starter wort to what you have, wait 24-36 hours, and you have about 200B cells. You need 219B. Go for it.

I'm currently stepping up my first starter as well. Is there any reason to add yeast nutrient with each fresh addition of wort?

HopOnHops said:

4L for a 60 point batch? Is this because you're not using a stir plate? They're super easy to make, I built one for less than 20 bucks recycling a computer fan and a gameboy power supply

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So even though I've brewed over a dozen batches and used Mr. Malty each time, for some reason on this occasion I didn't select the stir plate option (I do have one, and always use it when making liquid yeast starters).

Consequently, I am told I only need a starter of 1.75L so the 2L I have in the fridge now should be good.

Thanks for pointing out the obvious - it would appear that sometimes I need that prompt!!!

1.75L still sounds like a pretty large starter for a 1.060 ale to me.

Is it a 10 gallon batch?

weirdboy said:

1.75L still sounds like a pretty large starter for a 1.060 ale to me.

Is it a 10 gallon batch?

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NWMushroom said:

my yeast vial is a little old.

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Doesn't seem all that large to me, considering the age of the OP's yeast.