kpr121
Well-Known Member
Well I built up my starter to 750 mL the other day. In an attempt of measure growth of yeast I had measured the amount of slurry on the bottom after the 75 mL starter and got 9mm, and after the 750 mL addition I was around 10 or 11mm. I'm not sure that it's accurate or anything, but I was just trying to figure out if there was much/any growth in the yeast.
I put it in the fridge, and I think I'm going to decant it Friday night and also add another 750 mL of wort to the yeast again to prepare it for pitching on Saturday.
What do you guys think? Is it worth it to add another 750 mL?
Something seems off, that doesn’t sound like a whole lot of yeast. Typically they say around 1 billion cells per ml of slurry. That’s a crude (and possibly low) estimate but at that rate you’re only around 10 billion cells or so. For a five gallon batch you want somewhere in the ballpark of 200 billion cells. So something seems off.
But then when I imagine 200 ml of yeast slurry (~6 oz!) I don’t think I’ve ever pitched that much into a fermenter except when repitching from a yeast cake.
If I were you I would step up again, something like 1500 to 2000 ml. Im actually *thinking of doing a third step up on mine,
i.e. 8 bottle dregs >>> 600 ml @ 1.02 >>> 2000 ml @1.04 >>> split again and add another 2000 ml @ 1.050.
*seems like a lot of DME to be using though. I may end up just pitching the Bell’s as it currently stands in one fermenter, and using US-05 or S-04 on the other. Would be good flavor comparison experiment too.