First starter....one question...

If I am making a starter for a ten gallon batch, do I use only one smack pack and make a larger starter. I was thinking 1 cup of dme, 20-30 oz of water. Is my thinking correct?

 

For a single smack pack, a good place to start is 1L of water and 100g DME. Depending on the gravity of your wort you might want to step that up 1 or 2 times. Or if you want to start with a cup of DME you could do a 2-2.5L starter.

Keep in mind that a smack pack has barely enough yeast for a 5 gallon batch so you definitely want to make a starter, the question is how much is enough.

 

If you've not done so already, check out MrMalty.com. It's got a nice calculator that figures in your wort volume and gravity, then you can tweak to see how large a starter you'd need if you wanted to go down to only a single smack pack.

 

I have two smack packs. I was just wondering if I needed to use both of them if I was planning on making a starter anyway. I am familiar with mrmalty.com, I will check there for more information before I go through with this. Thank you for your responses.

 

I checked the calculator on mr malty and I am still slightly confused. To use 1 smack pack for 10 gal, it says I would need a 2 1/2- 3 gallon starter. Is this correct? Would I be better off making a smaller starter using two packs of yeast? A gallon or more of starter per 5 gallon batch of beer seems to be too much liquid to add. Or do you pour off the liquid after the yeast has settled in your starter and only pitch the yeast? I just want to make sure that I am doing this correctly. I did a 5 gallon batch of this beer and just direct pitched the smack pack. 1332 is a monster and it worked great. I am now gearing up to do a 10 gallon batch of the same beer.

 

Are you reading that correctly. The amount needed for pitching is displayed in liters, I
think.
You can make the starter, then chill it to make the yeast settle out then pour off the liquid on top before pitching.

What is your expected OG? Are you using a stirplate?

 

Actually, that sounds almost right to me... And yes - with that large a starter, you'd give the starter time to ferment out and then give it probably 24 hours in the fridge to cold crash (let as much of the yeast fall out of suspension as possible), then pour off most of the liquid and pitch only the yeast slurry into your fermenter.

 

Expected og is 1.060-1.065...10 gallon batch... I do not have a stir plate... I switched the units from liters to gallons...it said over 5L. If I use two smack packs, I could make a much smaller starter. I was planning on doing the starter in a growler.
I am pretty sure that I'm reading everything correctly. I just like the reassurance...thanks guys!

 

Give this calculator a try, the numbers are very close to mr.malty's. If you want to try and step your starter, this will give you a much better idea of where to start.

YeastCalc