How many people make yeast starters?

[wilserbrewer]

I have done very few starters, typically choosing to re pitch fresh slurry out of the fermenter, rather than make starters. I do starters mainly to harvest yeast from bottle conditioned beer. Another option to consider is making a small 2 gallon batch with one tube of yeast, then collecting slurry from that batch for a lager batch. Why make a starter when you can make a lesser quantity of beer for not much additional work....yea I'm lazy, but draw the line at underpitching and avoid doing so if at all possible.

 

[beerloaf]

I usually do with liquid yeast. I mostly due so since I have had a large frozen "yeast bank" and that's how you wake the little boogers up. I usually don't make a starter when I use dry yeast.

beerloaf

 

[Qhrumphf]

I have done very few starters, typically choosing to re pitch fresh slurry out of the fermenter, rather than make starters. I do starters mainly to harvest yeast from bottle conditioned beer. Another option to consider is making a small 2 gallon batch with one tube of yeast, then collecting slurry from that batch for a lager batch. Why make a starter when you can make a lesser quantity of beer for not much additional work....yea I'm lazy, but draw the line at underpitching and avoid doing so if at all possible.

I'm much the same. I will brew a nice low gravity session beer without making a starter (assuming fresh yeast, that is, if it's old I'll still make a small one), and then repitch for a number of generations without a starter. Small batches are another way of dealing with it too.

The starter itself isn't what's important. It's getting the proper pitch rate for the results you want to achieve that matters.

 

[lhommedieu]

When I use liquid yeast, I make 3.5 liter starters. Cold crash and decant; swirl the yeast on the bottom and divide into 2 carboys.

Lately I've been pressure-cooking wort to use for starters for the next batch. I dilute the wort with distilled water when needed. I still bring the wort to a boil to sanitize the flask and foam stopper.

 

[Natdavis777]

Ive been doing starters for a few years now, including making my own stirplates. I think its good practice that yields great results. I also harvest a lot of my yeast and use it for a few generations, which pays itself off with the extra effort IMO.

 

[bhfd64]

I made my first yeast starter on the 4th of July this year as I was concerned with the viability of the liquid yeast I ordered from AHBS due to the warm temps. I pitched it into a 1.054 Belgian pale. A day or so later I had my first fermentation blowout. Blew the stopper and airlock clean out of the carboy and spewed all over. It wasn't quite Mt Vesuvius like, but made a hell of a mess still.

 

[AQUILAS]

I made my first starter about 3 weeks ago. This past weekend, I made another of WYEAST 1010 yeast. I didn't realize it was nearly 6 months old until a few hours after I had smacked it and noticed it didn't inflate much. I made a starter anyways. I made a 1L starter (100g DME/1L water) and had it on the stirplate right at 12am. After about 18 hours, I wasn't feeling confident about the yeast propagating due to yeast starter calculators giving me a 0% viability, so I made another 1L starter and tossed it in. The next day, I cold crashed, and this is how much yeast I ended up with.

A whole lot more than I was expecting...

The layer is about a quarter of an inch thick, covering the entire bottom of my 2L flask. So 1/4" all around.

My question is, how would I go about figuring out how much yeast I have? I plan to brew either tomorrow or friday and I'd like to figure out how much yeast to pitch instead of pitching the entire thing.

 

[Natdavis777]

My question is, how would I go about figuring out how much yeast I have? I plan to brew either tomorrow or friday and I'd like to figure out how much yeast to pitch instead of pitching the entire thing.

You can estimate how much yeast you have by finding how many mL you have. Ive seen reports of density of slurry being anywhere from 1-5 billion cells/mL. Myself, I go off Wyeast's recommendation of 1.2 billion cells/mL to be conservative.

 

[desabat]

I made my first starter about 3 weeks ago. This past weekend, I made another of WYEAST 1010 yeast. I didn't realize it was nearly 6 months old until a few hours after I had smacked it and noticed it didn't inflate much. I made a starter anyways. I made a 1L starter (100g DME/1L water) and had it on the stirplate right at 12am. After about 18 hours, I wasn't feeling confident about the yeast propagating due to yeast starter calculators giving me a 0% viability, so I made another 1L starter and tossed it in. The next day, I cold crashed, and this is how much yeast I ended up with.

A whole lot more than I was expecting...

The layer is about a quarter of an inch thick, covering the entire bottom of my 2L flask. So 1/4" all around.

My question is, how would I go about figuring out how much yeast I have? I plan to brew either tomorrow or friday and I'd like to figure out how much yeast to pitch instead of pitching the entire thing.

Ball park number is 1 billion cells per ml of slurry. Of course, other factors that affect viability are not factored into that but chances are that as long as you have healthy yeast that number should work.

 

[TheMadKing]

I made my first starter about 3 weeks ago. This past weekend, I made another of WYEAST 1010 yeast. I didn't realize it was nearly 6 months old until a few hours after I had smacked it and noticed it didn't inflate much. I made a starter anyways. I made a 1L starter (100g DME/1L water) and had it on the stirplate right at 12am. After about 18 hours, I wasn't feeling confident about the yeast propagating due to yeast starter calculators giving me a 0% viability, so I made another 1L starter and tossed it in. The next day, I cold crashed, and this is how much yeast I ended up with.

A whole lot more than I was expecting...

The layer is about a quarter of an inch thick, covering the entire bottom of my 2L flask. So 1/4" all around.

My question is, how would I go about figuring out how much yeast I have? I plan to brew either tomorrow or friday and I'd like to figure out how much yeast to pitch instead of pitching the entire thing.

This is a question I've been seeing more and more. I think it might be worth it's own thread at this point.

There's 3 schools of thought here:

There is a method using dilution ratios, where you can estimate the cell concentration fairly accurately, but it takes time and math which makes most of us need a beer.

Many people just assume a concentration of between 1 and 4 billion cells/mL of slurry and that will get you in the rough ballpark

and finally, there's the idea that it doesn't matter what your starting cell count is when you make a starter because they will multiply to a point where there's no more oxygen and sugar in the starter, so the number of cells is decided by the volume and gravity of of your starter more than anything.

I don't think any of these are wrong, except to say that the last one needs some testing to back it up.

As a general rule, its hard to overpitch for a 5 gallon batch unless you put in a ridiculously large starter. I usually just make a 2L starter, cold crash and decant, let it warm to room temp and pitch it. I don't worry too much about pitch rate as long as its "enough." I think of it more as a threshold than an actual "ideal pitch rate".

My thinking could be totally bass-ackwards though! but it's always worked for me and I've never ended up with a slow fermentation start or a yeasty tasting beer.

 

[AQUILAS]

Ball park number is 1 billion cells per ml of slurry. Of course, other factors that affect viability are not factored into that but chances are that as long as you have healthy yeast that number should work.

You can estimate how much yeast you have by finding how many mL you have. Ive seen reports of density of slurry being anywhere from 1-5 billion cells/mL. Myself, I go off Wyeast's recommendation of 1.2 billion cells/mL to be conservative.

Thanks to you and desa! I'll use those numbers.

This is a question I've been seeing more and more. I think it might be worth it's own thread at this point.

There's 3 schools of thought here:

There is a method using dilution ratios, where you can estimate the cell concentration fairly accurately, but it takes time and math which makes most of us need a beer.

Many people just assume a concentration of between 1 and 4 billion cells/mL of slurry and that will get you in the rough ballpark

and finally, there's the idea that it doesn't matter what your starting cell count is when you make a starter because they will multiply to a point where there's no more oxygen and sugar in the starter, so the number of cells is decided by the volume and gravity of of your starter more than anything.

I don't think any of these are wrong, except to say that the last one needs some testing to back it up.

As a general rule, its hard to overpitch for a 5 gallon batch unless you put in a ridiculously large starter. I usually just make a 2L starter, cold crash and decant, let it warm to room temp and pitch it. I don't worry too much about pitch rate as long as its "enough." I think of it more as a threshold than an actual "ideal pitch rate".

My thinking could be totally bass-ackwards though! but it's always worked for me and I've never ended up with a slow fermentation start or a yeasty tasting beer.

Thanks for the info, King! Originally I was thinking of just tossing the yeast in, until the idea of overpitching hit my head. I've seen other say the same that it's hard to overpitch. But I'll probably just end up tossing the whole thing in.

 

[wardens355]

I use the Brewer's Friend starter calculator and make a starter every time I brew. I also grow oversized starters and store cultures of between 100-200 billion cells in mason jars in my fridge for future use.

 

[HomebrewPadawan]

You can estimate how much yeast you have by finding how many mL you have. Ive seen reports of density of slurry being anywhere from 1-5 billion cells/mL. Myself, I go off Wyeast's recommendation of 1.2 billion cells/mL to be conservative.

Ball park number is 1 billion cells per ml of slurry. Of course, other factors that affect viability are not factored into that but chances are that as long as you have healthy yeast that number should work.

I have also heard the 1-4 billion per 1 ml number, but that's a huge variance when we are talking about 50ml of yeast in the bottom of a jar either being 50, 100, 150, or 200 billion cells. I started a thread trying to figure out what factor people use when estimating their yeast count by the ml.

Here is the thread in case you want to add your opinion on it; https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=570218

It's a fun debate, but in the end, if your beer is or isn't lacking in fermentation character you can always just use the same factor you always do and pitch either more or less yeast to dial in a recipe.