Bell's culture

[biglakewill]

I am going to do a Bell's Hop Slam clone. I followed Bell's instruction for culturing yeast from their ales (midwestern pale ale). Using the dregs of three bottles in a 75ml starter with intemitent shaking for 3 days then poured into a 750ml starter for 2 days on a stir plate.

Reading Bell's instructions I would assume this would be a big enough starter for a 5 gallon batch of pale ale.

I will need to have enough to start 11 gallons of 1.090 OG. I know I will need to step this up, But, I have no idea how to calculate the number of cells I am starting with to calculate my steps.

The picture is my settled out yeast sitting next to my Janett's brown ale.

 

[tally350z]

Its a little hard from the picture to determine the amount of slurry you have? You could fill another mason jar with liquid to the approximate same level as the slurry and then use a starter calculation based on of the amount of slurry. Of course you don't know the actual cell count so its best guess.

 

[pony]

Go to www.mrmalty.com and take a look at their yeast cell calculator. The guy who does the website was one of the authors of the book "Yeast". I just finished a 13% abv base for a root beer. Getting the fermentation right was fairly complicated. Good luck