building up yeast starters..am i missing anything obvious?

[awtesta]

Lately i've been doing a lot of SMaSH brews and using WLP001. I finally realized that I've been wasting a lot of time/money on building yeast starters out of a yeast vial for every batch.

I brew maybe every few weeks if I'm lucky, so in the mean time what I'd like to do is the following.
- buy new vial of WLP001
- make yeast starter out of new yeast
- split starter into 2 and create new starter out of each
- split each one more time to create 4
- end up with 4 decent sized starters to store (decant off any excess wort)
- few days before next brew day, pull one of the 4 out and create a fresh starter

I don't see how this would be any different from your basic yeast washing from a yeast cake, in fact I would think it would probably be cleaner yeast. Only downside i'm seeing is time/effort

So my question is this. Aside from basic sanitation, am I missing anything?

 

[JLeuck64]

Your logic is sound. I too started realizing that if I made a 1.5L starter before brew day... I could pour off another starter and crash it, then pitch in the remaining 1L (or decant then pour in the yeast) to the batch I brewed.

Rinse, lather and repeat the next time ( : and the next time ( : and the next time ( : and the next time ( : and the next time... for many generations!

Your right, it is a clean harvest. You may notice that the Krausen gets going pretty good through subsequent generations. Perhaps even pushing over the top of your starter flask. But it still makes great beer!

 

[logdrum]

The only question I have is why do you need 4 jars? I do approximately the same thing, except that I simply oversize my starter so that I have ~100 bl excess cells to set aside for the next starter-which I oversize by about 100 bl cells. Lather, rinse repeat. Keeps the viability higher as you're always using the freshest "vial". Documented here:

Although, I skip the water step, simply leaving the spent beer on top of the yeast.

 

[m00ps]

^Agreed. I have a single jam sized mason jar or vial of each of my yeast strains. Thats all you need to get a starter going. Overbuilding starters is definitely the best way to keep your yeast healthy and consistent

 

[DurtyChemist]

I harvest from a starter now because it's easier. Chill, decant, swirl it up and refill the sanatized vial with fresh yeast and keep it in the fridge. It's much less space than 4 mason jars and you keep doing it again and again until you don't want to.

 

[jskennedy1979]

I'm with everyone above. Just overbuild by 100 billion cells and save a few steps. I also only brew every few weeks. It's more comfortable for me to only worry about one jar of yeast rather than 4 which could take me a few months to use.

Also, if you haven't found it, I love this website for calculating yeast:

http://www.brewunited.com/yeast_calculator.php

And:

http://brulosophy.com/methods/yeast-harvesting/

My latest harvest:

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[Baja_Brewer]

My last two liquid yeasts (WLP545 and WLP570) I wasn't sure how they were going to do since I bulit both starters off of two expired vials of each (they were $3) - I used the article on here on building a weak starter, and then stepping it up. I only stepped each up once since I was pitching into 3 gallon batches. Both attenuated to ~1.005.

Since I'm fermenting in my 5 gallon kegs I try and get the first pulls into a ball jar for my yeast capture since its pulling off the bottom. I might try and do a second grab out of the secondary (3 gallon kegs) - but I was able to capture about the same as ^ jskennedy when I pulled from the WLP545 (when I went after the 570 the keg I was trying to transfer into was over pressurized and blew air into the fermenting keg through the diptube, stirring everything up. Idiot.)

Next time I'll probably do a 2X starter like discussed here.

 

[Beer-lord]

I use 001 75% of the time so I buy fresh yeast and make 5L starters and save 3 L for future use. 1-$7 vial gets me 5 or 6 brews and that allows me to buy more hops which I seem to have an addiction to.
I use to wash yeast, brew over a yeast cake and hoard some but starting off with a huge starter without making too many generations just seems to work for me.
I'm also a brulosphy fan.

 

[JONNYROTTEN]

Im buying wlp001 tomorrow.Ive always used dry us05.I brew 10 gallon batches split into 5 gallons.Will one vial with a starter split be enough for both 5 gallons.

 

[Baja_Brewer]

Depends on how big your starter is... Use the calculators in one of the earlier posts- May require a step up starter.

 

[Beer-lord]

Im buying wlp001 tomorrow.Ive always used dry us05.I brew 10 gallon batches split into 5 gallons.Will one vial with a starter split be enough for both 5 gallons.

I seriously doubt it. Much better to over pitch than under pitch. But Baja_Brewer is correct, it's best to use something like yeastcalculator or mrmalty to figure out how much yeast you need. I've never brewed a beer small enough where 1 vial was enough yeast for 10 gallons.

 

[murphyslaw]

I'd like to try this method but I've got a couple questions:

1 - When I overbuild, should I save a % of the whole starter rather than the additional volume required?

Here's the long version: This past weekend, I made 5.25 gallons of a 1.060 IPA. Using WLP001 packaged on 4/13/16, the brewunited calculator said I needed a 1L starter on 5/27/16 (about 220b cells). Using the brewunited calculator, 100B extra yeast cells required 800ml. So I made a 1.8L starter, used 1L in my beer, and dumped the remaining 800ML between two pint-sized mason jars because I didn't have bigger jars. But now that I think about it, I had 1.8L of wort with roughly 320b yeast cells, I really only pitched 180b cells (56%), and I should have about 140b cells in my mason jars. So really, I should have kept roughly 560ml and pitched 1.24L?

2 - Is dead space in the mason jars a problem?

I've got pint (400 ml) and quart (800 ml) sized mason jars now. I could either fill the pint jar and call it 80b cells, or fill the quart jar and leave roughly 40% dead space.

 

[JONNYROTTEN]

I'd like to try this method but I've got a couple questions:

1 - When I overbuild, should I save a % of the whole starter rather than the additional volume required?

Here's the long version: This past weekend, I made 5.25 gallons of a 1.060 IPA. Using WLP001 packaged on 4/13/16, the brewunited calculator said I needed a 1L starter on 5/27/16 (about 220b cells). Using the brewunited calculator, 100B extra yeast cells required 800ml. So I made a 1.8L starter, used 1L in my beer, and dumped the remaining 800ML between two pint-sized mason jars because I didn't have bigger jars. But now that I think about it, I had 1.8L of wort with roughly 320b yeast cells, I really only pitched 180b cells (56%), and I should have about 140b cells in my mason jars. So really, I should have kept roughly 560ml and pitched 1.24L?

2 - Is dead space in the mason jars a problem?

I've got pint (400 ml) and quart (800 ml) sized mason jars now. I could either fill the pint jar and call it 80b cells, or fill the quart jar and leave roughly 40% dead space.

Air space in the mason jars has never had a negative affect for the many times Ive used a slurry.FWIW I stopped looking at the calculators a long time ago.I dump 3/4 to a full mason jar in all my batches now.That would be around 400 to 500 ML.I think that's around 3 times what the calculators recommend.Ive come to the conclusion its nearly impossible to overpitch
Target has a 9 pack of mason jars for $10 that work great

 

[murphyslaw]

Air space in the mason jars has never had a negative affect for the many times Ive used a slurry.FWIW I stopped looking at the calculators a long time ago.I dump 3/4 to a full mason jar in all my batches now.That would be around 400 to 500 ML.I think that's around 3 times what the calculators recommend.Ive come to the conclusion its nearly impossible to overpitch
Target has a 9 pack of mason jars for $10 that work great

Thanks. I picked up the mason jars today.

As far as volumes go, this method is a bit different because theres just a small layer of slurry at the bottom. I'm more concerned about making sure I'm pitching enough and harvesting enough than overpitching.