LastStop
New Member
Whatsup people, I'm going nano. Doing 3 BBL batches, and I'm in the process of ordering/designing all of my stuff. 
As a homebrewer, my starters have always been 1 cup DME in a quart of water, shaken, then added the next day. Never had a stuck fermentation, everything is happy. A couple of times I didn't do a starter, and just had some lag time, and I noticed difference in my brews. Consistency is key, especially because we're going to start selling this stuff. Hard to keep up with demand of friends, and people at tastings that we've attended. Figured why the hell not. Well, a lot more when into our nano decision, but that's another story.
So, cup and a quart-doing a little more research and a little math that seems to be really to be a really gravity. LHBS hands out sheet I got that seemed to be also on the back of a smack pack, recommending those volumes.
Figuring 1.044 with 1 LB of DME, let's divide the .044 by 16 to get ounces. 0.00275 makes what an ounce would do in a gallon. Multiplying that by four, that would be what an ounce would do in a quart, I assume, so that's 0.011. Multiplying that by 11 ounces, what I've found to be the weight of a cup of DME, for my quart, we get 0.121. So, a cup in a quart of water is 1.121 SG.
Unless my math is convoluted, this is not the right way to do it. I've been using Mr Malty to figure this stuff out since. I guess that whole first story about my homebrewing starter misgivings could have been avoided in this post. Sorry.
Now that I'm dealing with larger volumes, I'm curious as to the route I should take. We're dealing with a limited budget and I don't want to start pricing yeast propogators, the ones that I've found have been too large for us anyway. Our project has been custom, and DIY up until now, I don't see why I can't come up with something for this.
So, If I have enough yeast cells harvested from other batches, and I pitch at the proper rate, theoretically I can just use the proper amount of straight yeast without doing a starter and dump it in my batch, as far as the limits of my understanding go, and I can aerate the wort in the conical with the fresh, straight yeast (no starter), straight form slurry.
Now, of course, I understand why I've been using a starter-it increases the health and number of cells, and gets them primed for fermentation. So, using the repitching from slurry tool on the Mr Malty calculator, I can see how much slurry, if I choose the concentration right in the middle at about 2.7, that I think I'll need.
My question is, (I think, because this post has actually changed like 10 times since I started writing what I thought my question was and then changed it) is it better to just find the right amount of slurry that I need and not use a starter, or should I figure out some sort of starter option, using DME, or steal some of my wort from one batch and use that somehow, etc-the options are plentiful.
I have conicals and I'll be able to harvest some healthy slurry, I'm just not sure about the "best" way to do this. Thoughts/threads/things I might not have read?
Thanks, my zymurgistic friends!
As a homebrewer, my starters have always been 1 cup DME in a quart of water, shaken, then added the next day. Never had a stuck fermentation, everything is happy. A couple of times I didn't do a starter, and just had some lag time, and I noticed difference in my brews. Consistency is key, especially because we're going to start selling this stuff. Hard to keep up with demand of friends, and people at tastings that we've attended. Figured why the hell not. Well, a lot more when into our nano decision, but that's another story.
So, cup and a quart-doing a little more research and a little math that seems to be really to be a really gravity. LHBS hands out sheet I got that seemed to be also on the back of a smack pack, recommending those volumes.
Figuring 1.044 with 1 LB of DME, let's divide the .044 by 16 to get ounces. 0.00275 makes what an ounce would do in a gallon. Multiplying that by four, that would be what an ounce would do in a quart, I assume, so that's 0.011. Multiplying that by 11 ounces, what I've found to be the weight of a cup of DME, for my quart, we get 0.121. So, a cup in a quart of water is 1.121 SG.
Unless my math is convoluted, this is not the right way to do it. I've been using Mr Malty to figure this stuff out since. I guess that whole first story about my homebrewing starter misgivings could have been avoided in this post. Sorry.
Now that I'm dealing with larger volumes, I'm curious as to the route I should take. We're dealing with a limited budget and I don't want to start pricing yeast propogators, the ones that I've found have been too large for us anyway. Our project has been custom, and DIY up until now, I don't see why I can't come up with something for this.
So, If I have enough yeast cells harvested from other batches, and I pitch at the proper rate, theoretically I can just use the proper amount of straight yeast without doing a starter and dump it in my batch, as far as the limits of my understanding go, and I can aerate the wort in the conical with the fresh, straight yeast (no starter), straight form slurry.
Now, of course, I understand why I've been using a starter-it increases the health and number of cells, and gets them primed for fermentation. So, using the repitching from slurry tool on the Mr Malty calculator, I can see how much slurry, if I choose the concentration right in the middle at about 2.7, that I think I'll need.
My question is, (I think, because this post has actually changed like 10 times since I started writing what I thought my question was and then changed it) is it better to just find the right amount of slurry that I need and not use a starter, or should I figure out some sort of starter option, using DME, or steal some of my wort from one batch and use that somehow, etc-the options are plentiful.
I have conicals and I'll be able to harvest some healthy slurry, I'm just not sure about the "best" way to do this. Thoughts/threads/things I might not have read?
Thanks, my zymurgistic friends!
