Stepping up, splitting and saving?

[CNYSteve]

I'm about to brew my first batch in 23 years and I'm struggling to remember the details and nuances. Not to mention the way I did it then might not be best practical anymore.

Without boring you with details I basically stepped up a smack pack with 2 cups or DME wort. Once it got busy I'd split it into two bottles, brew with one and save the other. When it was time to brew again I'd feed it, step it up, split it again, repeat... I'd get 3 or 4 batches out of one smack pack doing this and always had a few different strains kicking around.

Now I'm reading about scraping yeast off the bottom of the primary. That's new to me. What's the best practice for "stretching" and storing yeast these days. Or is this all a dumb idea?

Dude at the HB store says he uses dry yeast these days as the Liquid is an expensive pain in the neck and dry is much improved. Back last time I brewed dry yeast was crap.

Can anyone comment and/or direct me to a thread on these two questions?

 

[Staticsouls]

I do starters similar to what you described every once in a while, and use dry yeast when I am lazy. Both have given me consistently good outcomes as long as I did my part before it was their turn. I keep dry yeast on hand for jic moments, but try to make a habit to overbuild starters and save for the next batch. I have not restarted the yeast for more than 3 batches yet. 8 bucks for liquid yeast and about 8 bucks for 3 packets of dry yeast. If you get at least 3 batches out of the liquid yeast then you might be even.

 

[day_trippr]

I'm an over-built starter person, much easier/cleaner to set aside clean yeast than mucking about with trubby harvest, plus the yeast haven't really had a chance of being "changed" through use.
I have a half dozen strains I've been ranching for well over a year and they still perform "like new"...

Cheers!

 

[RM-MN]

Overbuilding as starter and saving half for the next batches is good. You have clean yeast to work with. Saving yeast from a completed batch of beer works fine too but....you need to have left a little beer on the yeast cake to preserve it until you can get it into jars and that beer can carry over some of the flavor of the previous batch. Making a light color beer, then saving the yeast for a darker batch usually works good. Making a stout and saving that yeast for a light color beer may not.

 

[jdr01]

I often wonder if the starters are worth the effort and cost. For most of my beers dry would work fine. I just brewed fifteen gallons with a yeast that was many months old. I built it up several times just guessing if I had enough. I also think about the cost of the DME. I probably used about eight cups of DME. It seems the cost of the starters begins to balance out with the cost of buying yeast.
Luckily my beer took off and is bubbling away so I guessed about right.

 

[NeoBrew]

I'm about to brew my first batch in 23 years and I'm struggling to remember the details and nuances. Not to mention the way I did it then might not be best practical anymore.

Without boring you with details I basically stepped up a smack pack with 2 cups or DME wort. Once it got busy I'd split it into two bottles, brew with one and save the other. When it was time to brew again I'd feed it, step it up, split it again, repeat... I'd get 3 or 4 batches out of one smack pack doing this and always had a few different strains kicking around.

Now I'm reading about scraping yeast off the bottom of the primary. That's new to me. What's the best practice for "stretching" and storing yeast these days. Or is this all a dumb idea?

Dude at the HB store says he uses dry yeast these days as the Liquid is an expensive pain in the neck and dry is much improved. Back last time I brewed dry yeast was crap.

Can anyone comment and/or direct me to a thread on these two questions?

All of the things you mentioned are viable ways to stretch your yeast into more batches. Starters are fairly common place for liquid yeast these days. When some of the posters indicated "overbuilding" their starter, they are doing some calculations to figure out how to get enough yeast for their batch and then set aside some for future storage. That would typically be a lot more than 1 cup worth.

There are a lot of great calculators out there to help you figure out pitching rates for yeast. One of my favorites is Brewer's Friend yeast calculator. With this tool you can calculate what starter size you need for your beer, plus estimate how to have 100 billion cells to set aside for your next batch. That would gives you about the equivalent of a new smack pack to start your next calculation from.

 

[Tarpon87]

I over build my starters and save the excess in a sanitized mason jar to use for a future brew.

 

[mirthfuldragon]

I often wonder if the starters are worth the effort and cost. [...] I also think about the cost of the DME. I probably used about eight cups of DME. It seems the cost of the starters begins to balance out with the cost of buying yeast.

Add a couple of pounds of 2-row to your next pale ale or blonde and pressure-can the second or third runnings at ~1.035. Maybe I got lucky, but my retired grandparents gave me their pressure cooker (in the original box, with receipt, from before I was born . . .), and a case of quart mason jars is ~$12. Once you do that, starters are easy. Sanitize a flask, pour in a harvest pint jar of yeast from a prior starter, pour in a quart of pressure-canned wort, come back in 36 hours.