Hi Everybody,
I'm going to be doing a 1 gallon test batch of a recipe I'm working on. According to three different calculators (Mr. Malty, YeastCalc, and BeerSmith), I'm going to need to pitch at most 30 billion yeast cells, or 1/3 of the Wyeast smackpack I have. I would like to save the rest of the yeast and, if all goes well with this recipe, use a starter to bump up my cell count from the remaining 2/3 to pitch to a full 5 gal batch.
I have a bunch of white labs tubes lying around I figure I can store the rest of the yeast in the fridge til the time comes. However, my question is regarding the actual "smack" part of the smack pack:
If I break the smack pack and release the nutrients, will that affect the storage of the yeast that I am saving? I could easily just let it come to room temperature, and use yeast nutrient in my boil to compensate for the lack of "smack"ing.
If it's not going to affect anything, might as well use it, make sure my yeast are healthy before I pitch 1/3 of it, and then save the rest. But I don't want to affect the yeast in storage in any way if it would make a difference.
Does anyone have any thoughts or experience on storing portions of liquid yeast?
This is my first post, though not my first brew, and this forum has definitely been a wealth of knowledge helping me through my beginner problems. thanks!
I'm going to be doing a 1 gallon test batch of a recipe I'm working on. According to three different calculators (Mr. Malty, YeastCalc, and BeerSmith), I'm going to need to pitch at most 30 billion yeast cells, or 1/3 of the Wyeast smackpack I have. I would like to save the rest of the yeast and, if all goes well with this recipe, use a starter to bump up my cell count from the remaining 2/3 to pitch to a full 5 gal batch.
I have a bunch of white labs tubes lying around I figure I can store the rest of the yeast in the fridge til the time comes. However, my question is regarding the actual "smack" part of the smack pack:
If I break the smack pack and release the nutrients, will that affect the storage of the yeast that I am saving? I could easily just let it come to room temperature, and use yeast nutrient in my boil to compensate for the lack of "smack"ing.
If it's not going to affect anything, might as well use it, make sure my yeast are healthy before I pitch 1/3 of it, and then save the rest. But I don't want to affect the yeast in storage in any way if it would make a difference.
Does anyone have any thoughts or experience on storing portions of liquid yeast?
This is my first post, though not my first brew, and this forum has definitely been a wealth of knowledge helping me through my beginner problems. thanks!