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A 2 cup sized starter is really quite small for a full pack, the yeast will consume the nutrients and sugars very quickly, most likely within 24 hours. The best way way to test, is to check gravity to see if the yeast has fermented all the sugar.

That's a very useful article (and one I have read often before) however you can't just include the table since it's inaccurate without reading the article: Plates/slants are essentially the same thing, the surface area, if it is airtight and how it is stored are really the only differences, so...

I don't like to leave them any longer than a week, if it's been more than 2 weeks, I'd suggests its best to make pitch the yeast into a a new/fresh starter to ensure the cell count and yeast health is as optimal good as you expect.

The starter will ferment quickly since there is not that many available sugars and nutrients for the amount of yeast you pitched, in that size starter mostly the yeast will just consume everything there without even growing much. If you're brewing a high gravity dubbel, as others have...

If you weighed them, before and after, you could work out how much moisture was removed and have some 'scientific' basis for your question. However, when they feel dry and do not contain any noticeable moisture when you squeeze them is good enough for home freezing.

It would probably help if you specified which yeast you are using, since most likely it's the yeast responsible for the 'off putting smell'.

Yeast require an ample supply of Oxygen to reproduce and condition themselves before they start fermenting your beer. As a result, wort aeration is very important and has an impact on lag time, however a longer lag time is not necessarily a bad thing - just because you have the shortest lag time...

By pitching 2 packs of yeast he is assured of a specific and set pitch rate (assuming his packs are fresh and in good condition), he knows he is pitching pretty much exactly 200billion yeast cells. If you make a starter - depending on the volume, level of sugars and nutrients, how (and how...

Sounds like a good reason to always try to have a stock of various dry yeast in the fridge. :)

Did you keep it refrigerated, if not wash it, make a starter then go from there.

I'd suggest trying to decant off only the viable yeast into a smaller size starter, step that up again to your full starter and pitch that. If you can isolate the yeast that is alive and active there is no reason you can't use it.

If it was me, and I wanted to reuse that yeast, I'd work on the assumption that most of it is dead. I'd add a small sample to a small starter (say 5ml) and work up in steps from there.

My procedure is something like this, not the 'least amount of steps' but rather a slow, sure and safe way: Frozen yeast, slant, 5ml, 20ml, 100ml, 500ml, 2L The slant allows me to visually check the yeast viability after coming out of the freezer, then the small steps help 'proof' the yeast...

From memory, one of the last comments in Palmer's book about mashing is that the grain/water ratio is one of the least significant factors when determining the outcome of your mash. If that's true its most likely not something that can easily be tested on a home-brew basis given the variability...

It gets in the way, is cumbersome etc ... but given that old-fashioned brew kettles were made of copper there is no 'issue' with keeping the copper coil in the boil, if that's your question.

I'm lazy and so I usually just soak everything in hot water and sodium percarbonate (the active ingredient in Oxyclean) and a drop of dishwashing detergent (as a surfactant). A few hours in that (up to 24) and it's about as clean as it's going to be, no work, effort or fuss.

This would be my suggestion (but of course you can make great beer many ways): Be insanely pedantic about your sanitation, run the wort through your CFC, cover it up and put it in the fridge to chill it. Next day you may even like to consider racking it off the trub into another fermenter...

So true, my version of ghetto is just fly-wire-mesh next to an open doorway, not even a fan involved. The OP is welcome to come and build me a 'ghetto' hop dryer anytime, looks like a good idea to me.

In most weather, for established plants in the ground, somewhere in the range of 20-40L per plant per week should be adequate (and it's also about what was suggested previously, just a little easier for me to understand than various complex rates/formula).

Very informative post Revvy. However, I've had some yeast (Kölsch yeast for example) turned into starters that smell pretty bad for the first couple of steps, that went on to perform as expected and produce very nice beer. While I don't know what roadside diapered gorilla poop smells like...