Cell Count of White Labs Brett vials?

I've been scouring different threads on here trying to figure out the cell count of White Lab's Brett vials. I guess it's supposed to be 50 million/ml but is that ml in reference to the yeast slurry in the vial or the vial as a whole? In the thread below BeerSmith says it's 1.75 billion cells per vial. (50 million X the 35ml vial)

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f127/all-brett-b-pitching-rates-157509/

Is he right?

http://www.whitelabs.com/beer/homebrew/starter-tips

"White Labs Pitchable Yeast is packaged with 70 to 140 billion yeast cells,"

blizzard said:

http://www.whitelabs.com/beer/homebrew/starter-tips

"White Labs Pitchable Yeast is packaged with 70 to 140 billion yeast cells,"

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That's for sacch. They put far fewer brett & bacteria cells in their vials.

From Micheal Tonsmiere in his post about his 100% Brett Brux Trois IPA he has this to say:

The biggest challenge of fermenting with only Brett is growing enough cells to pitch. While suggestions vary, most brewers pitch somewhere between ale and lager cell counts. I bought from White Labs, so I had to grow 3 billion cells into close to 150 billion. A two stage starter on my stir-plate at around 80 F was enough to do the job in about 10 days. The 1.5 L starter had the beer rocking by the following morning at 66 F.

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sweetcell said:

That's for sacch. They put far fewer brett & bacteria cells in their vials.

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My bad. Wow, it is actually quite annoying that this answer is not easy to find.

3L starter and 2 vials of Brettanomyces bruxellensis Trois is what I am making up today for my Farmhouse ale.

blizzard said:

My bad. Wow, it is actually quite annoying that this answer is not easy to find.

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Yes, That is why I am asking! I've done tons of reading and still can't come across a straight answer. I also came across the blog post SoilWorker was talking about which said the count was 3 billion, which is more than double what BeerSmith said in a post on here. I know it's important to know your pitching rates, but if you don't don't know how many you are starting out with than how do you know how much to build them up to? I was thinking about doing a 100% brett 2 gal cider batch and a 100% brett 2.5 gallon batch of beer so that's why I am wondering.

Edit: I got antsy and just threw one of the vials into 1 gallon of unfiltered organic apple juice so we will see what happens there.

Well I pitched one vial into 1 gallon of unfiltered organic apple juice Sunday afternoon and by Tues evening I saw a nice white pellicle started to form. As of wed night it doesn't appear to be bubbling or doing anything "active" like, but maybe that is normal?

PistolaPete said:

Well I pitched one vial into 1 gallon of unfiltered organic apple juice Sunday afternoon and by Tues evening I saw a nice white pellicle started to form. As of wed night it doesn't appear to be bubbling or doing anything "active" like, but maybe that is normal?

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my brett starters, once they got going, looked relatively similar to a sacch starter. CO2 was being produced. that's on a stir-plate. in my all-brett fermentations (AKA a large starter without the stir-plate), CO2 is released through the airlock and a small kreusen forms. pellicles, if they happen, haven't been 'til later.

Soilworker said:

From Micheal Tonsmiere in his post about his 100% Brett Brux Trois IPA he has this to say:

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I talked to the WL people while researching the book. There is a range depending on cell size, but under 3 billion for the pure-strain Brett vials (35 ml at 50-80 million cells/ml - 1.8-2.7 billion cells). Perfect for a secondary fermentation, but needs to be grown to get in the safe-range for 100% Brett. The blends have about twice that many cells, but still need some help in the Sacch department in my opinion.

Ok so that's two sources saying roughly 1.75-2.7 billion per vial, I guess I'll go with that until I hear otherwise. Here is a pic of the 1 gallon of unfiltered apple juice I added a vial of Brett C. to. I'm assuming this mass of white is a pellicle. I've seen no other activity or any co2 being produced. Is this normal when using Brett as a primary yeast?

If that is a pelicle, I would say you have a great deal of oxygen exchange to see one so quickly.
That would explain the lack of co2 visibly bubbling out. Your plug may not be seated well.

PistolaPete said:

Ok so that's two sources saying roughly 1.75-2.7 billion per vial, I guess I'll go with that until I hear otherwise. Here is a pic of the 1 gallon of unfiltered apple juice I added a vial of Brett C. to. I'm assuming this mass of white is a pellicle. I've seen no other activity or any co2 being produced. Is this normal when using Brett as a primary yeast?

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Are you aerating/mixing the starter? I haven't done a ton of 100% brett, but when I did a starter I put it on the stir plate and got a pretty typical krausen.

40watt: What do you mean by "if that's a pellicle"? Now you have me scared! I pitched the brett directly into a sanitized container of pasteurized apple juice so I hope it's a brett pellicle!

Blizzard: I pitched a vial directly into 1 gallon of juice, no starter. I have a stirplate for when I do make starters so I never see a krausen anyways, just cloudy goodness!

PistolaPete said:

40watt: What do you mean by "if that's a pellicle"? Now you have me scared! I pitched the brett directly into a sanitized container of pasteurized apple juice so I hope it's a brett pellicle!

Blizzard: I pitched a vial directly into 1 gallon of juice, no starter. I have a stirplate for when I do make starters so I never see a krausen anyways, just cloudy goodness!

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Why did you use apple juice?

TNGabe: I've been reading up on beers fermented w/ 100% Brett and I came across a post on here about someone making a 100% Brett cider that turned out really tasty so it sounded like an easy experiment for me to try. I usually use S-04 in my ciders so I wanted to see the difference.

PistolaPete said:

TNGabe: I've been reading up on beers fermented w/ 100% Brett and I came across a post on here about someone making a 100% Brett cider that turned out really tasty so it sounded like an easy experiment for me to try. I usually use S-04 in my ciders so I wanted to see the difference.

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Oh, you're making cider, well that makes sense.

Oldsock said:

I talked to the WL people while researching the book. There is a range depending on cell size, but under 3 billion for the pure-strain Brett vials (35 ml at 50-80 million cells/ml - 1.8-2.7 billion cells). Perfect for a secondary fermentation, but needs to be grown to get in the safe-range for 100% Brett. The blends have about twice that many cells, but still need some help in the Sacch department in my opinion.

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It would seem that Wyeast puts substantially more brettanomyces cells in their smack packs. Jason did a cell count of Wyeast at 68 billion cells for brett brux. That would put it at roughly 25-38x more cells than in a White Labs vial.

ocluke said:

It would seem that Wyeast puts substantially more brettanomyces cells in their smack packs. Jason did a cell count of Wyeast at 68 billion cells for brett brux. That would put it at roughly 25-38x more cells than in a White Labs vial.

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Yep, I think I quoted Greg in ASB as saying they aim for 75 billion/pack.