Under pitching and then re pitching

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Allenjoseph5

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I planning on brewing a Hefeweizen this weekend. The LHBS only had one packet of the Wyeast 3068 that was a little old. Even with a starter, I will be under pitching. Which I'm not too upset about, because I'm hoping for a lot of banana esters. I am worried about any other undesirable flavors though.

With the starter, I'll be at about 0.41M cells / mL / °P. Or about 100 billion short.

I also bought a vial of WLP380. Which is more clove than banana. Again I'm hoping for lots of banana.

So my plan is to under pitch with the wyeast, which should increase the banana esters. And then re pitching with the WLP380 to clean up any unwanted off flavors. Does this sound reasonable? I'm still pretty new to homebrewing.
 
Step up your starter.

Once it's done and the krausen resides, stick your starter in the fridge. The next day brew up some more wort and pour off the beer. You'll be left with a yeast cake in the bottom. Let it warm up to room temp and then put your new wort on top. Use the starter calculator with your new calculated cell count (from the first starter) to determine what you'll get from the step. Step it up as many times as you need to hit optimal pitching rates.

As for the banana/clove ratio, I would think you'd be better off adjusting that by controlling fermentation temperature.
 
1- if you take care and properly acclimate yeast, under pitching shouldn't be a concern. Increased lag phase is the only consequence (admittedly there are some risks to long lags but I think there are benefits as well).
2- I'm not well versed with these yeast strains, but I'm not 100% confident that a repitch would do anything at all. Once the beer is fermenting, the dominant yeast strain may out compete any added strain. They may play together, but many strains do not. Once you start dropping gravity, you're in the clear (unless you are starting with crazy high OG).

Edit: I agree with temp control for flavor profile.
 
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Is there a downside to pitching the other strain after initial fermentation has stopped? I've read that this can help clean up any Diacetyl and other unwanted flavors. Since I really want to highlight the banana, I was planning on fermenting on the higher range of temp. So my thought is that the second pitch of yeast would help with this.

I wouldn't want to risk it if there were any downsides to that, however.
 
I can come up with a terrifying down side where the second yeast has a kill factor that shuts down yeast 1 but the nutrients required for cell walls have been depleted so yeast 2 can't finish ferm and you end up stuck. Likelihood... Somewhere between hell freezing over and the KU football having a winning season, but conceivable. To address diacetyl concerns, I'd bring the ferm temp back to 65-70 at ~1.02 and let it stay there for three days after gravity stops moving. Leave it longer if the samples are still buttery. If buttery after 7 days, your screwed and I was wrong.
 
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