How much hefe yeast to pitch?

[Sadu]

Hey everyone,

I'm planning to brew a 6 gallon hefeweizen this weekend. Decided to get in early with my starter in case it took ages to floc out before decanting.

I am overbuilding my starter and plan to use what I need for this brew and reserve the rest for later. What I'm unsure about is how much yeast I need for this brew, and since it's a hefe everyone suggests slight underpitching to get some nice banana but not by so much that it ferments poorly. Normally I'd just overpitch and not worry about it, can't do that with hefe yeast.

To complicate matters Beersmith says I need 275b cells, MrMalty says 205b (and I'm aiming to underpitch by maybe 25%). This all jumps around a lot depending what assumptions I make in the calculators, to be honest I could really use some advice from someone who has brewed a few of these successfully.

So here's my numbers, appreciate any advice on how much to pitch.

- 23 litre / 6 gallon hefe, 1.049 target OG
- Wyeast 3638 Bavarian Wheat - 3 weeks old, approx 78% viable
- Step 1 starter - 500ml of 1.030 wort, 24h on stirplate
- Settled overnight - cleared up real good - decanted
- Step 2 starter - 1 litre 1.040 wort, will leave 24h+ on stirplate
- Will settle and decant when step 2 is done and see how much I get
- My standard aeration practice is a good 1-2 min blast with the electric drill

I read somewhere that it's more reliable to do calcs based on the actual settled starter volume rather than the calculator estimates.

Does anyone know how much settled starter slurrey to pitch for a 6 gallon hefe? It should be very clean and healthy yeast with the pack being new and plenty of time on the stirplate. My best estimate is 70-90ml but I don't have the experience to really know.

 

[Erik_Mog]

I just plugged your numbers into the BeerSmith starter tool (not the starter tab on the recipe) and it showed 206B cells needed, and 120ml of slurry to get there. if you pitched 90ml, that would be about a 25% under pitch.

The Hefe I did called for 2 packs of WB-06. I pitched 1 pack, and it came out very nicely. For some reason, the starter portion of the recipe shows a much higher amount of needed yeast than just the Starter Tool. The starter tab on the recipe for my Hefe showed I needed 250B cells for an OG of 1.049 (5.5 gal batch), but the starter tool shows only 188B. I have no idea why the numbers are so different, or which one really shows the correct amount.

Sorry I cant be more helpful.

Edit: And to confuse things even more, the only time I get the big difference in amounts is putting in the numbers for my Hefe. I put in the yeast date, etc. for the IPA I just did, and the numbers matched up pretty close. Kind of weird. Go Figure.

 

[Sadu]

Thanks for the reply. I just tried the starter tool in beersmith and you are right, it's different to the starter tab. Seems consistent with the other calculators wanting just over 200b cells.

I'd still appreciate any input from anyone who have pitched a hefe from clean starter slurrey before, otherwise 90ml is in the ballpark of my (somewhat inexperienced) calculations.