Nottingham Starter for Harvest

[nukinfuts29]

Nottingham in an 11g packet has something like 200 million cells in it, and that's a lot. I use Nottingham as my primary yeast, and I'm thinking of taking a packet, making a large starter, and then harvesting the yeast into jars to spread the packet out over several batches instead of just one.

My question is, with that many cells, what size starter are we talking about here? I figure it has to be at least a gallon. So are we talking say 2 gallons of water, and......let's say 12 cups of sugar?

 

[bob1852]

Why not just brew with one pack and then harvest yeast from the primary? I did that during the great notty shortage of 2009....

 

[sudsmcgee]

Agreed, just brew and harvest. So much easier and more efficient. You're making a 5 gallon starter really.

 

[nukinfuts29]

Because my batches are all pretty high in OG for the most part, testing notty's limits. It has been working really well, but the harvested yeast has not. I'm new to the harvesting, maybe i'm doing it wrong.