1st Time Lager

[commonsense]

Longtime Ale brewer here, finally getting ready to brew some lagers. Started formulating some recipes and noticed they call for 4 vials of yeast as opposed to the typical 2 vials. This would be for a standard German style lager at roughly 1.048 OG. I'm a White Labs user and I always go with 2 or 3 vials depending on OG (or whatever the recipe formulation tells me).

So I guess my obvious question is, is this accurate? If I'm supposed to use 4 vials of yeast that will cause a bit of an increase in my brewing budget and I will have to rethink getting into brewing lagers. Especially considering the time it takes to lager after fermentation.

FV1: Lemon Summer Ale
FV2: American/English Pale Ale Hybrid
FV3: Oatmeal Stout

Bottle Conditioning:
American Strong Ale
Kolsch

Serving:
American Pale
Old Ale
Molasses Porter
Nut Brown Ale

 

[cooper]

Do you have the equipment to make a starter? Then you could purchase one vial and use an online calculator to step it up to the size you would need. Lagers typically need a larger dose than ales and the benefit really makes it worth the effort.

 

[BrewerBrad82]

In general, lager beers require roughly twice the yeast cell count as their ale counterparts of the same gravity. Ales are pitched in the neighborhood of 0.75 million cells/ml wort/degree Plato, while lagers are more in the 1.5 million cell/ml/P range.

Yeast starters are the way to go. You can propagate one or two White Labs vials up to a proper cell count very easily. Starters are cheap too!

 

[SnakeRidge]

I agree with the others above. Starters are the way to go. Better than 4x$6.99=$27.96(!) per batch. You have to plan a few days ahead, but the savings are worth it.

 

[commonsense]

Thanks guys, should have known starter was the way to go. Never thought of it since I've been avoiding doing it all these years.