Did I make a big enough starter?

I am brewing a doppelbock with an OG of ~1.084. According to Mr Malty, i need about 2 yeast vials and to make a 4.22 liter starter for the beer.

What I did was make a 1600 ml starter with 1 vial, let it ferment out, and then made a 1 gallon starter and pitched the yeast from first starter into the gallon starter.

Does anyone else have experience with this? This is my first lager and Im not sure if this will be enough yeast. Im brewing saturday and have time to make a bigger starter if needed.

I do not think you will get the same growth. I have heard many times yeast will only grow so much given a certain size container. This is where the 5000ml flask comes in handy.

So should I step it up again? Say make a 2 gallon starter in a carboy?

I would go ahead and pitch what you have.

I think you'll be fine.

Gremlyn1 said:

I think you'll be fine.

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Cool. Ill give it a shot. It may or may not be enough, but I figure I'm in the ballpark

At least you made a starter, good for you! I haven't done one in years, but I have considered starting again. Worked well when I did them. I cultured mine up to 3 liter batches. pitch what you have you'll do fine.

However using safale dry and wyeast wack packs I haven't needed to. I'm usually getting fermentation in a few hours. haven't used white labs yeast vials in a very long time.

My opinion is that you can get away pitching one vial, no starter in a normal beer. It'll ferment and end up pretty good. You could do the same with two vials and a high gravity beer. If you went as far as to take the one or two vials and made a starter or any reasonable size, the yeasties have woken up and are ready to go and you'll be better off than if you pitched the two vials having done nothing to them. I don't doubt that for commercial breweries pitching rate is incredibly critical for consistency of product, but I think as home brewers we have a little more wiggle room.