How much from Fridge to Starter?

[mkravitz13]

Been searching around the forum for more specifics on how you guys determine how much of your washed yeast to add to a starter?

A lot of people seem to not care and just throw in the entire contents of their harvested refrigerated pint of yeast into a starter (which surely must be well over 100 billion cells to begin with)

I'm a tad worried about overpitching considering that I typically do very small batches of beer (3 gallons).

I'm familiar with the wyeast figure below as well as mr malty's calculator. how do you guys go about doing it and nailing your correct pitching rates?

its considerably more complicated than just weighing out dry yeast, or pouring the contents of a wyeast smack pack into a starter....

 

[Photopilot]

Mr Malty's has a calculator that measure bulk yeast. Look for the "repitching from slurry".

The only question is how to determine the non yeast percentage and how thick is your slurry, then you just have to measure out the amounts suggested in ml of slurry.

 

[william_shakes_beer]

I undertand there are yeast calculators, but I don't use them. I also don't harvest from yeast cakes. I harvest from split starters. When I pitch a starter to my beer, I reserve a little slurrey in the starter vessel. Then I do another starter step, cold crash, decant and harvest to 4 preform tubes. I used to harvest the pre pitch slurrey but found this method gives me more yeast cells. Also found that the stored yeast turns brown (which indicates dead yeast) from top to bottom. A deep narrow deep storage container seems to store longer. No test data, so smarter people may say I'm full of $(*&, but that is what I have observed.

 

[mkravitz13]

Mr Malty's has a calculator that measure bulk yeast. Look for the "repitching from slurry".

The only question is how to determine the non yeast percentage and how thick is your slurry, then you just have to measure out the amounts suggested in ml of slurry.

okay! but that portion of the calculator will tell me how much of my slurry I should add directly to my fermenter.

what about to my starter? approx how many cells should I be shooting for to go into a starter. 100 billion cells like a normal wyeast pack?

 

[mkravitz13]

I undertand there are yeast calculators, but I don't use them. I also don't harvest from yeast cakes. I harvest from split starters. When I pitch a starter to my beer, I reserve a little slurrey in the starter vessel. Then I do another starter step, cold crash, decant and harvest to 4 preform tubes. I used to harvest the pre pitch slurrey but found this method gives me more yeast cells. Also found that the stored yeast turns brown (which indicates dead yeast) from top to bottom. A deep narrow deep storage container seems to store longer. No test data, so smarter people may say I'm full of $(*&, but that is what I have observed.

ok so let me get this straight. after harvesting from the residual slurry from your primary starter, you transfer it to a secondary starter. build it up, then you split that starter into four equal aliquots?

thats a cool idea, I hope you've had great results that way! so then, do you create another starter (using one of the aliquots thats been in your fridge) before pitching to a new batch? if so, how do you estimate roughly how many cells your adding to your starter if you do it this way?

 

[stratslinger]

Just add the whole container of washed yeast. If you add only a portion, and attempt to reseal the left over portion, you're exposing that leftover portion to a significant risk of infection (at least, IMHO). Add the whole container to your starter, get a good, healthy slurry from the starter, and use the calculator to determine how much of that slurry to pitch. At that point, you can choose whether to attempt to store or dump the remainder of the slurry, and go ahead and wash and harvest again once fermentation is complete.

 

[thadius856]

I have this same question going, somewhat, in [thread=387620]another thread[/thread].

My question pertains a little more to estimating cell counts from split starters, but I think the answer is going to be in much the same direction.

Subscribed. Hope you get the answer you're looking for.

 

[Photopilot]

okay! but that portion of the calculator will tell me how much of my slurry I should add directly to my fermenter.

what about to my starter? approx how many cells should I be shooting for to go into a starter. 100 billion cells like a normal wyeast pack?

Not sure you can accurately guess 100b cells. That is the beauty of the purchased vials. You start with a known qty at know health ( based on date), grow it to needed size. If you are starting from a slant you don't have the luxury if starting with a known qty. You could add a number of vials to get an estimated number of cells. What I would suggest is start a pint starter to grow the slant. I am under the impression you don't want to grow too much from a small # of cells. Chill the pint sized starter, decant the wort off then use this sized yeast to grow whatever sized starter. Measure out your yeast cell count based on the "pitching from slurry", slant your leftovers.