Enough Harvested Yeast for 5 Gallon Batch?

[NothingRhymesWithCurtiss]

I harvested some Wyeast 2112 a few months back and was planning on using it for a 2 gallon batch, but got to wondering if I have enough for a 5 gallon batch? Typically I just fill up some 16oz salsa jars, decant, and toss one in for a 5 gallon batch.

OG for this batch will be 1.06 or less.

The bottle I used came from an old DIY BBQ sauce set and I am unsure of the size. I put it next to a standard 12oz bottle for reference.

Regarding using a yeast pitch rate calculator, it's a foreign language to me. I've tried, but I just don't get it.

Side note: this is the cleanest yeast I've ever harvested due to using hop bags for every step and cold crashing to 32° F.

Thanks.

 

[porterpounder]

Usually about 250 ml of fresh slurry is good for a mid-gravity beer like that. If it's been sitting around for a couple months, pitch it into a starter and go from there. That little bootle looks to be about 250-300 ml of slurry

 

[NothingRhymesWithCurtiss]

Usually about 25 ml of fresh slurry is good for a mid-gravity beer like that. If it's been sitting around for a couple months, pitch it into a starter and go from there. That little bootle looks to be about 250-300 ml of slurry

Wow! I had no idea that small of a quantity of slurry was needed. Thank you.

 

[IslandLizard]

Use the yeast calc at brewunited.com. I estimate the cell count of the slurry around 1.0 billion per ml at time of harvesting. Using 100 ml, about half of the slurry you've got there, and enter the date the beer was done fermenting (I used 11/01/2016 in the example, yeast being 3 months old now).

 

[porterpounder]

Wow! I had no idea that small of a quantity of slurry was needed. Thank you.

Sorry, I meant 250 ml

 

[NothingRhymesWithCurtiss]

Use the yeast calc at brewunited.com. I estimate the cell count of the slurry around 1.0 billion per ml at time of harvesting. Using 100 ml, about half of the slurry you've got there, and enter the date the beer was done fermenting (I used 11/01/2016 in the example, yeast being 3 months old now).

Thanks for doing the hard work for me. Unfortunately, I don't have a stir plate and haven't ever successfully done a starter. I tried a few times through "manual" stirring of the starter, and never got any activity. Most of the time I just let the slurry warm to pitching temp, and toss it in. Otherwise I use smack-packs or dry yeast.

 

[IslandLizard]

When your slurry is from a fairly recent batch, stored in the fridge for say 2 months or less, you can easily pitch it without a starter, you just need to pitch more slurry to get the cell count, like 250ml or more, as mentioned before, depending on age. Count on 1 - 1.5 billion cells per ml of thin (smooth pourable) slurry or 3 - 4.5 billion cells for solid packed slurry, which is what you have in your BBQ bottle. The yeast in the bottle looks darkish brown, there may be a good amount of trub (break matter, hop dust) mixed in.

In comparison to direct pitch of slurry, making a fresh starter guarantees many (new) daughter cells and an overall more viable yeast.

It's easy to build a stir plate. Or use manual shaking for the time being. Put a drop of Fermcap-S in the starter wort to prevent excessive foaming. You're still going to have some foaming, so use a large container, like a 1 gallon (wine) jug/carboy. In the past I've lost half my starters to the countertop, overnight, with was a nuisance, had to start all over again, and again.

Set the calculator to (manual) shaking and predict the growth that way.

There are also "vitality starters" (Brulosopher.com, look 'em up) and other ones like "SNS" (Shaken Not Stirred) starters. Many ways to grow fresh, healthy yeast.