starter's and stepping up

Sorry if this is a repeat post but when making a starter is it necessary to step it up or can you just start with 1 vial of yeast into a 2 litre starter. Also would right at 24 hours be enough time for a 2 litre starter to be ready. Beer I'm about to brew has an OG of 1.065.

 

Anyone?

 

1L should be plenty for your starting gravity. Just pitch 1 pack of yeast into 1L of wort, and let it ferment for 24 to 36 hours swirl the yeast into suspension everytime you walk by it, if you don't have a stir plate. You can do the same with 2L, but you want to decant most of the liquid first (you don't want too much oxygenated beer in the fresh batch). Hope this helps.

 

Thanks. I'm gonna get it going for my first all grain batch tomorrow.

 

1L rides the line between "perfect" and "underpitching," in theory. If you've got a perfectly viable pack, you can theoretically hit exactly 225b cells in 1L, which is the ideal pitching rate for a 1.065 5g ale. However, if your vial/smackpack is just 1 month old, you will need to make a 1400ml starter instead.

http://www.yeastcalc.com/ is a fantastic tool that will make it easy for you to make a pitch perfect starter. (I know, I know, bad pun!)

EDIT: I did the above calculations assuming you're using a stir plate. If you're not, you'll need to do a 2L starter to hit the proper pitch rate, give or take.

 

24 hours wouldn't really be enough for a 1L starter.. it would be better than just pitching the yeast right in, but really not ideal.. do you have a stirplate? the best way would be 3-4 days to pitch the yeast into your starter wort, let it spin for 2-3 days, then cold crash it in the fridge for the last one.. you'll easily be able to decant majority of the unwanted beer off the top, swirl around the yeast for a couple secs then pitch it into your beer.. let it sit out on your counter for an hour or so to warm back up as well..

 

There is no need to go more than 12-18 hours on a stirplate. This is from information given by a Wyeast tutorial. The point is to increase the number of yeast cells not to completely ferment beer. The yeast reproduction goes quickly and then they convert the sugars to alcohol.

Decanting is advisable with any larger starter as the liquid is not properly fermented beer and you don't really want that in the finished product.

 

Well since time is not on my side, I made a 1l starter using 1 vial of (20 day old) WLP565 last night. Is it fine to just pitch the whole thing into my wort instead of decanting? I'm not using a stirplate . I'm using the swirl every time I walk by it method. There is also a noticeable increase in the volume of yeast in the starter.

 

You don't have to decant. It'll be fine if you pitch the whole thing.