Pitching enough Lager yeast ???

[509inc]

I am planning on brewing my first lager and have a question regarding the yeast starter. I have a 2L flask and always make starters for my Ales, but the pitching rate calculators I have seen suggest a huge 9L starter using 2 vials of yeast.

I do not have a 9L flask to make such a large starter. The pitching rate calculator also suggest using 6 vials with no starter.

Ok so here is my question. Since I prefer Wyeast can I just activate 6 smackpacks and pitch them? Should I make a 2L starter with 1-2 smackpack and hope that is enough or do a combination of starter and smackpacks?

Your thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

 

[osagedr]

Fool around with yeastcalc.com You should be able to do a step up starter to get where you need to be. Might take more than one pack, but a lot less than six!

 

[509inc]

Ok so yeastcalc.com say I can do this we a 3 step starter build up to get the required amount of yeast cells.

Once each step has finished fermenting do I chill and decant the start then add fresh wort for each step? Might sound like a dumb question but I want to make sure I understand it correctly.

 

[zeg]

You can do it that way (chill and decant), but you don't exactly have to. Usually, if I'm doing a small first step and then going to a larger one, I just add the extra wort without decanting. After a large step, I decant, both to keep volumes reasonable and to maintain a wort OG in the 1.035-1.040 range.

E.g., I just did a 3-step starter that was 500 mL, 2.5 L, 5 L. For that, I just added the 2.5 L step on top of the 500 mL step, then I decanted before going to 5 L. It seems to have worked, at least based on there being about twice the yeast solids at the end of the last stage as there were at the start of it.

 

[509inc]

It appears all I needed to do was hover the mouse over the correct part of the screen on yeastcalc.com to get my answer.

 

[509inc]

One more question. I found this one homebrewing.org and it doesn't match up with what I have always heard of bottles needing to be left at room temp for a few weeks to carbonate. Anyone have experience with this?

Bottling A Lagered Beer

If you're planning on bottling your lager, then you should really consider putting it into bottles before you go into the secondary fermentation stage. There are two important considerations:

Agitation: The secondary fermentation process is meant to get your beer crystal clear, by forcing the remaining solids to fall to the bottom of the storage vessel. Moving around a carboy, and siphoning beer — after your clarification should be complete — only risks stirring up sediments.
Warming: Unless you're bottling your beer in a meat locker, the transfer process will also warm your beer a bit. Combined with the agitation, you're creating the perfect conditions for it to re-absorb some of the solids that you've just worked so hard to eliminate.
So, as a rule, while it's always easier to do the primary fermentation in a single large bucket or carboy, if you want to eventually have bottled lager, you're better off doing the bottling at the end of your diacetyl rest. That way, you can just pull out the bottles when you're ready to drink them, and you'll be pouring the clearest beer possible.

 

[osagedr]

Bottles don't have to be at room temperature to carbonate--they need to be at a temperature where the yeast will be active. For lagers, that can obviously be much colder than room temperature (although room temps will work).

The line of reasoning in the material you cited seems a bit odd to me. I would: (1) ferment your beer down to about 8-10 points over expected FG (2) rack it to a secondary for clearing and potentially lagering (3) bottle it. There will probably be enough yeast still in your beer to carbonate it with no problems. However, there is little downside to rehydrating some yeast (either the original strain or some very clean ale yeast) and adding it to your bottling bucket to ensure you don't have carbonation issues. I bottle everything with a beer gun from kegs so haven't had to think much about carbonation for a long time.

Good luck!

 

[zeg]

Unless I'm missing something, I'd say that the reasoning in the article isn't just odd, it's flat out wrong. They're arguing that because you'll stir up some sediment when you move from lagering to bottles, you'd be better off just going right into bottles... meaning all of the sediment will be in the bottle.

some < all

 

[509inc]

Ended up pitching 2 Wyeast packs into 1500ml of 1.030 wort. Going to give it a 2nd step tomorrow night. Then starting another starter with to packs. Hopefully thought will be more than enough for 10 gallons of 1.090 Doppelbock

 

[osagedr]

Ended up pitching 2 Wyeast packs into 1500ml of 1.030 wort. Going to give it a 2nd step tomorrow night. Then starting another starter with to packs. Hopefully thought will be more than enough for 10 gallons of 1.090 Doppelbock

It would be difficult to overpitch that beer.

 

[pdxal]

In the future another option could be to make a 2-2.5 gallon batch of a small beer, rack off the starter beer and pitch the doppelbock onto the yeast cake in your fermentor. Then you have a small beer to drink too, and plenty of yeast for your doppelbock.

 

[509inc]

That is a great idea. Might look into that next time. I do think this time I will have enough yeast.

As a side note is there a way to configure yeastcalc.com to start the math for pitching 2 vials into the starter? Or do it always assume you are using 1 vial?

 

[TBaGZ]

Just change the initial cell count.

 

[509inc]

Just change the initial cell count.

well that was easy

 

[509inc]

Just decanted and added fresh wort for the step up. Fingers crossed

 

[509inc]

This is one chunky starter.

[ame]http://youtu.be/wHFkZVd5p_s[/ame]