mandoman
Well-Known Member
Really? Jamil and Palmer's book suggests a 9 L starter made from one vial of WL yeast for a 10 gallon batch. That's a 2.5 gallon starter for 10 gallons of beer. This is just one example that recurs a lot. In this case I'm calculating the best starter size for the american wheat recipe, which is 2 vials for 5 gallons (or 4 vials for 10 gallons) which, if you want to use 1 vial, translates to a 9 L starter. It's still cheaper than 4 vials (about $32) for 1 vial plus almost 2 lbs DME (about $8 for a total of $16). So, that's half the price. If I made half as big a starter (still better than 1 vial and about the same as 2 vials or $16) it would cost $8 for the vial and about $4 of DME or $12. I guess the way to do it would be to mash my own wort, make a 2.5 gallon batch of unhopped 1.040 wort, what is that, about 4 lbs of grain or $4 at bulk prices? Shoot, that's about the same as DME. I guess the way to do it is to brew a 2.5 gallon batch with one vial, then dump ten gallons onto that yeast cake. Hmmmmmmmmmmm. That's assuming one vial of WL is a good pitch rate for 2.5 gallons of beer, which seem to be ok for most ales. Of course, that's not building it up. Would it be necessary to make a small starter for that? Seems like the 2.5 batch of beer would be the starter in this case. The resulting yeast cake would then be the starter for the regular ten gallon batch i intended on doing. And in this case, I'm not dumping 2.5 gallons of DME beer out I'm drinking 2.5 gallons of good beer. Of course, gonna cost a bit more for malt and hops but.........
Is my logic flawed? Is this reasonable?
Is my logic flawed? Is this reasonable?