Starter tab in BeerSmith

[agentbud]

Someone help me understand the Starter tab in BeerSmith. See the example screenshot below. For Yeast Cells Needed, it says 349.2B. I am using a dry yeast with a viable cell count of 54B per packet. But it only recommends 1.9 packets, which by my count would be 102.6B cells.

Why does it recommend less than a third the cell count when using a dry yeast versus when making a starter with liquid? I am assuming the 1.9 packets is correct as the yeast calculator on Lallemands website says the same amount - I'm just confused why this screen says it needs 349.2B

 

[day_trippr]

When you only have dry yeast in your recipe under the Design tab, the Starter page functionality is greatly reduced - it doesn't even pretend to do anything about a starter. Try deleting the dry yeast and add a liquid yeast (any one, really) and you'll see what that page is supposed to do...

Cheers!

 

[agentbud]

Yeah, I noticed that when using a liquid yeast, the numbers made much more sense. It is just weird that regardless of dry or liquid, the "Yeast cells needed" is 349.2B but when using a dry yeast, the suggested usage amount is 1/3 that. Why wouldn't you need 349.2B cells regardless of whether it is dry or liquid?

 

[day_trippr]

"Yeast Cells Without Starter" isn't a recommendation, it should simply reflect your cells per pack times the number of packs in your recipe.

I plugged your yeast strain into a random neipa recipe and this is what I see. Biggest question I have now is why the cell count per pack on your example is so much lower than this:

This all seems to make sense: based on cells needed by the recipe volume and OG the tool suggests two ways to get there based on packet sizes, but I don't use Lallemand so I don't know if those package sizes are correct. What is the net gram weight of the packs you're using?

Cheers!

 

[day_trippr]

Ok, I manually edited the cells per pack to 100B (from 200B) and this is what happened:

BS3 adjusted the number of 5gram packs, but left the 11.5 gram pack count unchanged, even though I had halved the per pack cell count.
Interestingly there's no reference to the pack sizes in the BS3 yeast parameter sets. And I have no idea what size that yeast comes in.
If I were to assume they only come in 5 gram packs I supposed one could claim the above is proper-ish...

Cheers!

 

[agentbud]

Interesting. The ingredient profile for that yeast in my BeerSmith says 60B cells per pack. I just looked it up on Lallemand's site and it says the cell count should be 5 x 10^9 per gram of dry yeast. For an 11g packet, wouldn't that be 55B?

 

[day_trippr]

Lol of course. I'll see if there's an update for the yeast plug-in...but that's not going to fix what looks like broken math for 11.5 gram packs.

[edit] Apparently the Lallemand yeasts are contained in a base set of BS3 strains and no apparent way to update them outside of a software version update - and I'm already at the latest version...

 

[agentbud]

might explain why the last time I used that yeast it did not fully attenuate. Didn't put enough 11g packs in.
I might shoot an email to BS to see what Brad says