Lager starter questions

[Dr Vorlauf]

I need your advise. I am doing a pseudo lager starter now. I am an ale guy and prety green on bottom fermenting yeast. I am used to big krausen and huge blowoffs etc.

My "Lager" starter looks like all the CO2 bubbles are coming out of the bottom. Also when I shake it big volumes of CO2 come out with foaming. Is this normal?

Also how big of a starter should I do? I pitched 1 smak pak of Wyeast 2565 Kolsch in a starter of 1 pint of H20 with 1/2 cup of Pilsner DME. seeing that the activity wasent what I am accustomed to I pitched another pak of the smae yeat and the same H20 and DME.

Today I added 1/4 cup DME and 1/2 pint of H20. Is this enought to pitch into a 12 gallon batch of Kolsch? Right now its built to 2/3 of an 1/2 gallon.

 

[boo boo]

Well I usually make a gallon starter for 5 gallon brews and let my starter ferment out, decant most of the spent wort and just pitch the cooled slurrey.
You pitched 2 packs into wort that wasn't of a high enough volume. Pitch what you have into at least a gallon of wort and aerate well as often as you can to increase the cell count. If you can do it you can then increase it to 2 gallons before pitching.
If you are brewing right now and have to pitch, well you can expect a long lag time and probably beer that won't be as good as it could have been. You may get a higher finishing gravity.

Good luck

 

[Dr Vorlauf]

Will do ! I just had a gut feeling that this was a wimpy amount.

 

[rabidgerbil]

Everything that I have been able to find says that or IDEAL numbers, you want roughly 2 liters of starter for a 5 gallon batch, so your 12 gallon batch would need about 5 liters, or more than a gallon of starter.

Mr. Malty and a few others have pitch rate calculators, you can go look this up, but they all seem to agree on the 2 liter per 5 gallon rule.

 

[Scimmia]

rabidgerbil, from what I'd seen, they agree on that number for an ale, but double that for a lager.

 

[rabidgerbil]

rabidgerbil, from what I'd seen, they agree on that number for an ale, but double that for a lager.

Looks like you are correct, since I am not a big lager fan, I did not pay much attention to that part.

To quote from Mr. Malty

"You might have heard that when using yeast harvested from a previous fermentation, the optimal pitching rate for ales is 6 to 10 million cells/ml and 10 to 15 million cells/ml for lagers. That is a generally accepted ballpark, but it doesn’t take into account the starting gravity of the wort. Higher gravity worts require more yeast and lower gravity worts require less. You want to pitch around 1 million cells of viable yeast, for every milliliter of wort, for every degree Plato. A little less for an ale, a little more for a lager. In his book, An Analysis of Brewing Techniques, George Fix states that you need to pitch 0.75 million cells per milliliter for an ale and 1.5 million cells per milliliter for a lager. While these rates are for repitching yeast harvested from fermentation, I have found that they work well for both repitching yeast and when using laboratory cultured yeast that has been subjected to less than optimal conditions since leaving the manufacturer."​

 

[Kaiser]

I pitched 1 smak pak of Wyeast 2565 Kolsch

You said that you are brewing a lager. But the Kolsch yeast is an ale yeast.

I do agree with the others on the larger starter. If you have the means of keeping the yeast in suspension (stir plate) you should be able to get by with 1.5 - 2 qts of starter. That's what I do for lagers and Kolsch/Alt. It also helps to resuspend the yeast by shaking whenever you get a chance.

Kai

 

[Dr Vorlauf]

You said that you are brewing a lager. But the Kolsch yeast is an ale yeast.

I do agree with the others on the larger starter. If you have the means of keeping the yeast in suspension (stir plate) you should be able to get by with 1.5 - 2 qts of starter. That's what I do for lagers and Kolsch/Alt. It also helps to resuspend the yeast by shaking whenever you get a chance.

Kai

Thanks all. I might step up to 4 quarts over the weekend.