Chris White on Starters

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tagz

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On several occasions, I've heard/read Chris White downplay the need for starters (most recently on a basic brewing podcast). He argues that you don't really get a significant increase in population from a 1-2 liter starter. That goes against data from homebrewers that have done actual cell counts (Kai, Woodland, and others). Is he just trying to sell more vials or is his argument valid?
 
It may be considered anecdotal but my personal experience is that fermentation starts earlier and is more vigorous when I use a starter. Starter or not, I'm still buying a vial. Don't see a conflict of interest there.
 
The potential conflict comes once that single vial cell count is insufficient for a particular pitch...

This – he doesn't wanna lose the business of the folks who don't wanna play around with starters (myself among them) to the dry yeast guys. I make no comment either way on whether it's a legit concern, but it does seem like a pretty common perception that the White Labs vials do less well than dry yeast just bought and thrown in on brew day.
 
As over pitching is less of an issue compared to under pitching they should just give you enough yeast so you can still direct pitch on the best before date. I think they are switching to pouches so accommodating the extra volume should be less of an issue. There are cost associated with doing a starter so I would be willing to pay a couple extra bucks for the convenience.
 
He stated that the vials/PurePitch pouches have enough cells for a moderate gravity 5 gallon beer. His statements about starters was positive for brewers that wanted a faster start on pitching just a vial. He, also, mentioned that making a starter for an inexperienced brewer was a way to introduce an infection or off flavors. I spoke with him during NHC this year about the likelihood of introducing off-flavors using a starter and how to avoid it. His comments were consistent with every brewer I've talked with... If your starter is running at 80*F and/or the starter gravity is too high, you will cause stress on the yeast and therefore they can produce off flavors. On over pitching, he said the only danger of doing that is repitching a new beer onto too much slurry. I make starters 90% of the time as a matter of convenience for faster starts on my beers, and sometime to propagate enough yeast for a second starter.
 
He stated that the vials/PurePitch pouches have enough cells for a moderate gravity 5 gallon beer. His statements about starters was positive for brewers that wanted a faster start on pitching just a vial. He, also, mentioned that making a starter for an inexperienced brewer was a way to introduce an infection or off flavors. I spoke with him during NHC this year about the likelihood of introducing off-flavors using a starter and how to avoid it. His comments were consistent with every brewer I've talked with... If your starter is running at 80*F and/or the starter gravity is too high, you will cause stress on the yeast and therefore they can produce off flavors. On over pitching, he said the only danger of doing that is repitching a new beer onto too much slurry. I make starters 90% of the time as a matter of convenience for faster starts on my beers, and sometime to propagate enough yeast for a second starter.


Yeah, he definitely wasn't anti-starter but he often makes the claim that a 1-2 liter starter will not result in significant growth/reproduction. That just doesn't seem truthful at all. I'm just wondering if he knows something we don't know or just wants folks to use more vials rather than propagate their own yeast. Perhaps he worries that once people have a stirplate, they won't buy yeast as often (which I certainly the case for me).
 
I make starters and wash yeast and I'll always do that but that's just me. I get better attenuation and quicker fermentation and the more generations I use the yeast I've found the cleaner and clearer the beer I have. Again just me from what I've experienced washing yeast and making starters.
 
That sounds like your process selects the more flocculent cells and leaves the slow pokes behind...

Cheers!

I just use the old school way of washing yeast and use an online calculator to establish my starter size and i use the date it was washed as the viability or born on date and so far so good and I don't even use a stir plate. Although I will b getting one soon. I guess it's an if it ain't broke don't fix it thing even though there may be more efficient or less expensive ways.
 
Is it weird that I trust braukaiser more than him saying that. I mean I guess it depends on what he means by "significant" but starting with 70B and ending with 270B would be rather significant imo..
 
I think the question of production date / remaining viability comes into play. If you can happen to get a fresh vial or Smack pack for an under 1.060 beer then maybe a starter is not needed. But If you OG is over that or your vial is more than a couple months old, then a starter is probably a good idea to ensure live yeasties. Just my 2 cents
 
On several occasions, I've heard/read Chris White downplay the need for starters (most recently on a basic brewing podcast). He argues that you don't really get a significant increase in population from a 1-2 liter starter. That goes against data from homebrewers that have done actual cell counts (Kai, Woodland, and others). Is he just trying to sell more vials or is his argument valid?

Most of the vials from WL will say they're adequate for a 5 gallon batch. Which is correct as I see nothing but overkill on yeast counts constantly on this forum.

Personally I don't use any yeast calculators but I do make starters for every batch. They're all starters from yeast harvested from other starters. Always about 4oz of DME and they make a total of a 1.25L starter. That's how I roll even on High Gravity brews.
 
I have heard Chris White bring up and talk about numerous topics that could potentially hurt his business, so I certainly don't think that his comments are or were made in order to get people to buy more vials.... That being said - I make starters for every batch, every time without exception.

EDIT: I also ONLY use liquid yeast.
 
Most of the vials from WL will say they're adequate for a 5 gallon batch. Which is correct as I see nothing but overkill on yeast counts constantly on this forum.

Personally I don't use any yeast calculators but I do make starters for every batch. They're all starters from yeast harvested from other starters. Always about 4oz of DME and they make a total of a 1.25L starter. That's how I roll even on High Gravity brews.

Key word being adequate. I don't think most brewers aim for adequate beer but rather optimal beer, the best beer they can make. Pitching a good number of healthy yeast and ensuring proper fermentation conditions are usually the two things most said to improve your beer.
 
I spoke with him during NHC this year about the likelihood of introducing off-flavors using a starter and how to avoid it. His comments were consistent with every brewer I've talked with... If your starter is running at 80*F and/or the starter gravity is too high, you will cause stress on the yeast and therefore they can produce off flavors.

I would think yeast would be thrilled to grow at 80 degrees. Yes, you'd have lots of esters, you wouldn't want to pitch the starter liquid into your beer for that reason, but if you crash and decant, I would expect this to grow yeast quickly.
 
I would think yeast would be thrilled to grow at 80 degrees. Yes, you'd have lots of esters, you wouldn't want to pitch the starter liquid into your beer for that reason, but if you crash and decant, I would expect this to grow yeast quickly.

It was 80*F *and/or* too high of a gravity starter wort, not just the higher temperature. The high temperature and a high gravity starter wort or a high gravity starter work can stress the yeast. :mug:
 
Key word being adequate. I don't think most brewers aim for adequate beer but rather optimal beer, the best beer they can make. Pitching a good number of healthy yeast and ensuring proper fermentation conditions are usually the two things most said to improve your beer.

There's not any hard evidence that the propaganda for making gigantic starters actually improves beer.
 
I don't do starters, I find repitching slurry easier for me but if your doing starters wouldn't it be better to pitch it to your wort while its active at high krausen instead of cold crashing letting the yeast go dormant and decanting?
 
I don't do starters, I find repitching slurry easier for me but if your doing starters wouldn't it be better to pitch it to your wort while its active at high krausen instead of cold crashing letting the yeast go dormant and decanting?


That's what a lot of breweries do is harvest from the krausen because it's the healthiest, most active yeast cells.
 
I don't do starters, I find repitching slurry easier for me but if your doing starters wouldn't it be better to pitch it to your wort while its active at high krausen instead of cold crashing letting the yeast go dormant and decanting?

The problem is that finished starter beer can be nasty, and you don't necessarily want to add that to a beer, especially if you have a big starter going for a lager. When breweries harvest and re-pitch yeast from high krausen, they are getting it from a regular controlled fermentation, and there won't be abnormal amounts of esters or fusel alcohols.
 
White Labs is the contract manufacturer for my company The Yeast Bay, so I want to make sure no one thinks I'm speaking on behalf of White Labs, because I'm not. I definitely respect Chris' opinion and what they have seen work for their products, the guy's a yeast stud. However, when people ask me in relation to Yeast Bay products, I do recommend starters for two reasons:

1) Make more cells, at least according to Kai's model which I trust, and as evidenced by the massively thick layer of yeast in a 2-3 L starter.

2) Even if you don't need a lot more cells, a starter gets the yeast metabolically active and ready to go once pitched. Anecdotally, I have seen shorter lag times when using starters (I don't cold crash and decant, I pitch the entire thing).
 
White Labs is the contract manufacturer for my company The Yeast Bay, so I want to make sure no one thinks I'm speaking on behalf of White Labs, because I'm not. I definitely respect Chris' opinion and what they have seen work for their products, the guy's a yeast stud. However, when people ask me in relation to Yeast Bay products, I do recommend starters for two reasons:

1) Make more cells, at least according to Kai's model which I trust, and as evidenced by the massively thick layer of yeast in a 2-3 L starter.

2) Even if you don't need a lot more cells, a starter gets the yeast metabolically active and ready to go once pitched. Anecdotally, I have seen shorter lag times when using starters (I don't cold crash and decant, I pitch the entire thing).

This.
 
I'd also add that I imagine most people would rather find out their yeast is dead when their starter doesn't do anything than when they've pitched it into 5+ gallons of wort.
 
I'd also add that I imagine most people would rather find out their yeast is dead when their starter doesn't do anything than when they've pitched it into 5+ gallons of wort.

Correct! So called "proofing" the yeast is also a good reason to run a starter.
 
White Labs is the contract manufacturer for my company The Yeast Bay, so I want to make sure no one thinks I'm speaking on behalf of White Labs, because I'm not. I definitely respect Chris' opinion and what they have seen work for their products, the guy's a yeast stud. However, when people ask me in relation to Yeast Bay products, I do recommend starters for two reasons:

1) Make more cells, at least according to Kai's model which I trust, and as evidenced by the massively thick layer of yeast in a 2-3 L starter.

2) Even if you don't need a lot more cells, a starter gets the yeast metabolically active and ready to go once pitched. Anecdotally, I have seen shorter lag times when using starters (I don't cold crash and decant, I pitch the entire thing).


According to his latest interview, Chris would agree with you on your second point. It seems he is simply skeptical of the growth rate for homebrew scale starters. But until he produces some data, I tend to side with the folks who have done cell counts. Plus, as you say, the thick layer of yeast you find at the bottom of the starter reinforces the idea that there is a significant amount of reproduction going on.
 
According to his latest interview, Chris would agree with you on your second point. It seems he is simply skeptical of the growth rate for homebrew scale starters. But until he produces some data, I tend to side with the folks who have done cell counts. Plus, as you say, the thick layer of yeast you find at the bottom of the starter reinforces the idea that there is a significant amount of reproduction going on.

he has plenty of data in his "Yeast" book with Jamil.

I don't think he is arguing against 1L or 2L starters, but starters smaller than ~1L have negligible increase in cell count (much smaller yield).


Key Quote:
“Notice the effect of the small starter. A high concentration of yeast in a small amount of wort results in very little growth. The 500-milliliter starter barely grew, only a fraction of a doubling. The fundamental fact is that yeast cannot grow unless they have enough sugar and nutrients for each cell to divide. While the cells do not multiply much when the inoculation rate is this high, it can still benefit the existing cells. The takeup of sugar, nutrients, oxygen, and the production of compounds such as sterols, improve cell health. Starters rarely have a negative side; even if there is little yeast growth, a starter helps to revive yeast for fermentation by activating metabolism, and therefore fermentation starts faster. If you wanted to achieve a higher yield factor with the 800-milliliter starter, you would need a smaller inoculation rate. As the inoculation rate drops, the yield factor climbs. In this example, once the inoculation rate drops to 67 million/ml (100 billion cells in 1.5 L of wort), significant growth occurs. The yield factor can show us how different propagation parameters affect our process."


Excerpt From: Chris White. “Yeast.”
 
You're right. I guess he does have data out there. It just doesn't seem, from my unscientific eye to mesh with Kai and Woodlands info.

Anyway, to keep the discussion going , here's the quote from the Basic Brewing episode: "It doesn't really generate a lot of new cells, in most people's starters, unless you are doing a fairly big one."

He also kind of scoffs at online yeast calculators, saying that they overestimate.

Here's Neva Parker's slide on yeast growth from her Myth Buster presentation.

View attachment ImageUploadedByHome Brew1438781904.203100.jpg
 
You're right. I guess he does have data out there. It just doesn't seem, from my unscientific eye to mesh with Kai and Woodlands info.

Anyway, to keep the discussion going , here's the quote from the Basic Brewing episode: "It doesn't really generate a lot of new cells, in most people's starters, unless you are doing a fairly big one."

He also kind of scoffs at online yeast calculators, saying that they overestimate.

Here's Neva Parker's slide on yeast growth from her Myth Buster presentation.

View attachment 294487

There's definitely a discrepancy between the pitch rate calculators available to home brewers. Interestingly, I think a lot of the discrepancy comes down to the strains chosen to generate the underlying data. At Omega Yeast, we've undertaken a project to determine the terminal cell density every strain in our collection can achieve under the same conditions in order to provide a strain-specific pitch rate calculator. This might not be immediately apparent to most people, but every yeast strain is capable of growing to a different terminal cell density in the same medium. For example, when started from cells scraped off a plate, the Chico strain (WY1056/WLP001) has achieved cell densities of 148 million cells per mL, which is less than Kai's pitch rate calculator would predict (168 million cells per mL). Some strains, like WY1318, only get to 130 million cells per mL under the same conditions. Some Belgian strains, however, can achieve up to 300 million cells per mL. And Brett upwards of 600-900 million cells per mL. Note that Kai only used WY2042 when generating his data. His numbers for that strain are on par with what we've seen with that strain.

And to complicate matters further, Kai has also shown that stir plate speed impacts cell density achieved by the same strain -- likely because higher stirring speed exposes the growing cells to more oxygen (http://braukaiser.com/blog/blog/2013/03/25/stir-speed-and-yeast-growth/). We've found his observations on stir plate speed to be accurate. Our numbers line up with his with the "medium" speed results he reports with WY2042.

And yet another factor that plays into the calculations is the amount of cells you start with in your starter. White's observations about less new cell growth in a small starter pitched with a large amount of yeast is accurate. Here is my analogy for that situation. Imagine you need to eat three Twinkies to create a new you. If you're dropped into a room with 12 Twinkies, the prediction is that you can generate 4 new yous for a total of 5. What happens when 12 of you are dropped into a room with 12 Twinkies? If all of you quickly eat a Twinkie, there aren't enough Twinkies to make any new yous, so you remain at 12, despite the consumption of the available nutrients.

So all told, things are a little more complicated than they initially appear given strain to strain variations, stir plate speed, and starting cell density. We've found that for some strains, Kai's calculator does in fact underestimate the cell count and for others, it overestimates.

This goes to show that there's a lot of wiggle room in getting good results when it comes to pitch rate. I generally favor starters for the reasons a lot of people have already stated in this thread -- you know your yeast is viable when you see an active starter and the lag time is shorter, giving any baddies present less chance to cause problems. That said, we're going to make all of our data publicly available when we have it. Our hope is to offer a strain specific pitch rate calculator that incorporates the data we generate for those who wish to get a little more precision in pitch rates, for what it's worth.
 
Starters are a great way to prove your yeast and get them invigorated for the job (we can argue til the end of days on what an appropriate cell count is for a given beer).

I do 3 gallon batches. If I use liquid yeast, which would have more than enough yeast in a vial, I'll do a 300 ml starter just to get them awake and engines running. If no activity, it was a bad vial (and its happened).
 
Here is a video straight from White Labs on making starters: [ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zUYxb-_B8A[/ame]

Pertinent information to this discussion starts around 5:00 and 6:15.
 
This thread is particularly pertinent to my current situation. I bought 2 White Labs vials for my upcoming brew date. I got 2 because I was concerned about the needed cell count. I'm planning on a OG of 1.103. I had already decided that I was going to do a starter and the second vial was just a backup. So I get home and check the date...both have best use by date of 8/20. Almost at end of shelf life, and depending on which viability calculator you want there's somewhere between 40-20% viable cells left of the original 100 billion. I'm curious what is the best course of action here. I've decided to do a multi-step starter, using both vials in the initial 1.5L starter, and will step up to a 2L in the next stage. Overkill? Too little?
 
I do 16 gallon batches from a single smack pack about %95 of the time. Many pitching rate calculators state that I need between 2 and 4 smack packs and a large starter to have enough viable yeast for the job. I use a single smack pack and a 3-4 liter starter for my beers depending on gravity and they always start quick and attenuate well. I also cold pitch the yeast directly from the fridge into the chilled wort. my $.02
 
To comment on lshaner's post about terminal density, I'll routinely do cell counts for finished starters under a scope, and the strain really does make a difference, very commonly 2-fold difference for some strains. So data from a calculator must be taken with a grain of salt regarding final cell counts. I'll put my 2 cents out there that any starter is good practice for many reasons stated here, but an online calculator with a tab to select strain, I bet a lot of yeast harvesters (without a scope) would pay for that.
 
Some things to consider regarding Chris White's statement:

He's probably assuming a fresh vial and I think he probably has a simple starter with no stir plate in mind. If you have less yeast to start with or use a stir plate, there is a big difference in the percentage increase in yeast population.

Here's something you might find interesting from Gordon Strong:

"For a normal strength lager, I typically use a smackpack of Wyeast or make a 1L starter with a vial of White Labs. I don't go crazy on yeast, but I will often repitch from a normal batch if I'm making a stronger lager."

https://www.homebrewersassociation.org/forum/index.php?topic=17065.45

Notice he said "lager" here. Most calculators will tell you to use twice as much yeast for a lager and would also tell you that what Strong indicates is a big underpitch even for an ale. Still, Gordon Strong is not known for making awful beer.

I've seen explanations that when using fresh, healthy yeast from a lab, pitch rates can be a lot lower than indicated in most of these calculators.
 
Ishaner said:
And yet another factor that plays into the calculations is the amount of cells you start with in your starter. White's observations about less new cell growth in a small starter pitched with a large amount of yeast is accurate. Here is my analogy for that situation. Imagine you need to eat three Twinkies to create a new you. If you're dropped into a room with 12 Twinkies, the prediction is that you can generate 4 new yous for a total of 5. What happens when 12 of you are dropped into a room with 12 Twinkies? If all of you quickly eat a Twinkie, there aren't enough Twinkies to make any new yous, so you remain at 12, despite the consumption of the available nutrients.

This twinkie analogy wins the thread...great post all around though
 
I do 16 gallon batches from a single smack pack about %95 of the time. Many pitching rate calculators state that I need between 2 and 4 smack packs and a large starter to have enough viable yeast for the job. I use a single smack pack and a 3-4 liter starter for my beers depending on gravity and they always start quick and attenuate well. I also cold pitch the yeast directly from the fridge into the chilled wort. my $.02

Basically, this. I don't step up my starters. I make my starters a pint larger than needed and pitch that pint directly into up to a about a 3.5L starter.

I also don't use calculators. I use at least a quart of starter for every beer, adding about a pint per 20pts over 1.040.
 

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