How to step up a starter

Evan! said:

Brew a 1.5L starter. Pitch yeast (into cooled wort, of course). Let it runs its course and ferment out. It should be fairly obvious when it's done. Do you have a stirplate?

Anyway, once it's done, crash-cool it, then decant/discard the clear liquid on top. Do this VERY slowly and steadily, and watch the output stream very closely (make sure there's adequate light). When you start seeing the stream getting cloudy, stop pouring. You're dumping perfectly good cells! Anyway, once that's done, brew up another 1.5L of wort in a separate pot or flask, cool it down, and dump that into the original slurry. Let it ferment out, and you can either just dump the whole starter in, or, optimally, you would crash-cool and decant the second starter as well, so all you're pouring into the beer is the slurry.

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chemman14 said:

I plan on doing this for my next beer. How long should i estimate the time to crash cool at? 1 day? or 2?

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JKoravos said:

I cool my starters overnight before decanting. Pretty much any yeast strain will be 90+% settled out by that time.

You can calculate exactly what your step up volumes should be using the Mr. Malty calcuator, you just have to work it backwards.

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