Stepped starter - rushing each stage.

[Gadjobrinus]

Not sure if it should go here or in the general homebrewing area. My son and I have a window on Sunday to brew. He wants to learn, he's rugby-strong, and wants to do all the heavy lifting. All I do are calculations, and teach. Pretty sweet deal.

Problem is, I'm an idiot in that I screwed up the time allotted to getting up to speed on the multi-stage starter. For my 10ish gallon batches, I go slant-10ml-100ml-1000ml-4000ml. I'd planned to finish up 4000 by Saturday night, crash overnight, normal sop from there as of Sunday morning. Everything on a stir plate.

Almost without exception, I always go with 24 hours per stage. For me to get this ready, it would have to be 12 hours per stage, until pitching at the 4000ml level, when I can finally give 24 hours and go from there.

I suspect I'm sacrificing yeast buildup, which defeats the purpose. This is an English ale with OG 14.5 P.

Thoughts on 12 hour stir for the early stages? Many thanks.

 

[Gnomebrewer]

12 hours is generally past the lag phase and into the phase where yeast have good vitality. Of course, going from slant to 10mL may take a bit longer. Personally, I'd forego the 4L starter and forget about chilling and decanting - plan to pitch a full vitality starter. Slant to 20mL (do a double-scrape) - 36 hours; to 200mL - 24 hours; to 2L - 12 hours (pitch the entire 2L while it's acitve). Vitality starters work fantastically, just plan for it with your recipe (eg. a little more hops to counter the lack of them in the starter).

 

[ba-brewer]

It looks like your 4L step is a bit large, almost twice the .75million/ml pitch rate. You would get over 700B cells and for 10gal of 1058 wort you only need about 400B cells. If you did rush things and did not get all of the yeast you planned you might still be OK.
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I have went with a 12 hour steps on some middle steps when it looked like there was a fast build up yeast. I would be nervous about rushing the first two steps though but maybe do 18hr for first two step would be OK, then 12hr for the last two.

If you assume 1B cells created from the first 10mL step as the starting point. 100mL, 500mL 2.5L would get you over 400B cells.

If you start at 6AM Friday morning and did 18hr for 10mL(finish sat. 12AM), 18hr for 100mL step(finish sat 6PM ), 12hr 500mL step(finish sunday 6AM), 12hr 2.5L (finish sunday 6PM). Let last step sit for a 3 or 4 hours, decant the hazy stuff and use the stuff on the bottom. Without chilling the yeast will take off faster.

 

[Gadjobrinus]

Arghhh - thanks both of you. I have no memory left, it seems. Ba-brewer, I was just doing a somewhat typical brewery multiplier of between 4X and 10X stages, with final stage ending up with 4L starter for roughly 40L beer throughput. Hadn't consulted Homebrew Dad in a long while and sure enough, presuming 1B in the 10 ml starting stage, stepping to 100-500-2750 (my throughput is actually about 11.3 g, so 2500 ml has me a bit shy (at 11.3/14.5P, I need about 459 billion cells. 2500 ml final stage gets me close at 439, 2750 gets me there at 474 billion).

Much rather end up with a final of 2.75 liters than 4 Liters!

Finally, I've always crashed and decanted, adding in a quart or so of new wort once yeast is back to room temp. I like your idea of tossing yeast that had never seen anything but work. I can even live with 2.75 liters i an 11.3 gallon batch, but I might decant a little.

As nature would have it, of course, winter storm warning this weekend. So my plans are screwed anyway. Next week I'll try to, ahem, count the days to brewing.

Thanks again guys.

 

[ba-brewer]

Sounds like you will have some time to let the yeast set it's own schedule. Hope your brew day goes well.