viable yeast question

[solo103]

Have a quick question. On beer smith 2 when I plug in my recipe using the white labs London ale yeast wich shows it has 100 billion cells when I go to the yeast starter section it shows yeast cells needed 221.2 billion and then shows yeast cells without starter 11.8 billion viable cells with 11.78% viability. So my question is if white labs claims to have 100 billion cells and no need for a starter how come it is showing 11.8 billion with out a starter. The recipe shows a estimated abv of 5.5% wich by this yeast alcohol tolerance is well in range. So does the yeast only have 11.8 viable cells even though it claims to have 100 billion? Never used a starter but ran across this last night playing with beer smith and am looking in to doing some 9 -10% beers and was wondering how it all worked together. Thanks for the help.
Cheers,

 

[BBL_Brewer]

Fresh from Whitelabs, the vials should contain at least 100 billion viable cells. The only reason the yeast calculator should be showing a low viable cell count is if the vial is old. The older it gets, the more cells that die when storing at fridge temps. If that is the case, you can build these numbers back up with an appropriately sized starter, which is what the yeast calculators are for.

 

[solo103]

Cool I just don't understand why beer smith would just assume its old then because you don't put a date of the yeast into the program so it should calculate for good yeast not bad yeast I would think. Any idea why it show a low cell count then and if if used that program and made a starter it would probably be way more since its only showing 11.8 billion when it is 100 billing

 

[BBL_Brewer]

Well, I don't use beer smith so I don't know. If you don't trust it, try Mr. Malty it's a good yeast calculator.

Mrmalty.com

 

[solo103]

Thanks man i'll check it out