WLP-300 Sanity Check

[Crafty_Brewer]

Hi everyone, I’m building my starter tonight for a brew on Wednesday. I’m making a Hefeweizen, 5 gallon, 1.050. I have a pack of WLP-300 in the next Gen pure pitch pouch. They claim it has 2.15 B cells/ml, and there are 70ml in the pouch.

I usually overbuild my starters by 100B cells and harvest a pint jar before cold crashing and decanting the starter.

It seems with the new Gen pouches having about 150 B cells per package, the size of starter I would need would be outside of the inoculation rate and growth factor best practices, as in it starts with too much yeast for good growth.

I’m thinking if I pitch half the pouch into the starter (weigh out 45g to approximate 1/2 of 70 ml), that should be about 75 B cells and yield appropriate inoculation rate and growth factor, allow me to harvest my pint jar, and have about 185 B cells to pitch on brew day.

Does that sound about right? I’m using homebrewdad’s online calculator. I know it sounds like I could just direct pitch the pouch instead of making a starter, but I’m ranching the yeast for later when it’s $16 a pouch.

 

[VTX1300]

What you want to do is almost exactly what I have been doing since the new pouches have come out. The only difference is I measure out approximately 35ml with stainless measuring spoons instead of by weight. It has worked well for me so far. I am cheap so yeast ranching is the only way to go.

 

[Crafty_Brewer]

What you want to do is almost exactly what I have been doing since the new pouches have come out. The only difference is I measure out approximately 35ml with stainless measuring spoons instead of by weight. It has worked well for me so far. I am cheap so yeast ranching is the only way to go.

Excellent!

 

[dmtaylor]

What you are doing makes a lot of sense if you are wanting to ranch clean yeast for future use. On the other hand... I think hefeweizens are better when underpitched anyway, so I would otherwise consider just pitching it straight in, without a starter, and take some after fermentation for future use. Neither way is wrong, and I see advantages to your method too.

 

[Crafty_Brewer]

What you are doing makes a lot of sense if you are wanting to ranch clean yeast for future use. On the other hand... I think hefeweizens are better when underpitched anyway, so I would otherwise consider just pitching it straight in, without a starter, and take some after fermentation for future use. Neither way is wrong, and I see advantages to your method too.

Do you know what the ideal pitch rate is for good ester/phenol character in a Hefeweizen?

I know the ale pitch rates in general are around 0.75 million/ml, but I can craft my starter & ranching jar around a different pitch rate.

 

[dmtaylor]

Do you know what the ideal pitch rate is for good ester/phenol character in a Hefeweizen?

I know the ale pitch rates in general are around 0.75 million/ml, but I can craft my starter & ranching jar around a different pitch rate.

Many (most?) people will tell you to aim for 0.5 million/ml/P for most ales. And for hefeweizen I would personally tend to aim closer to 0.3 m/m/P. Your general rate of 0.75 m/m/P would be appropriate for hybrid styles fermented around 60 F (15-16 C), such as Kolsch or altbier or warmish fermented lagers, or certain UK ales.

If you really want to make a growth starter and save 100B cells for later, consider maybe only inoculating 15B (one tenth of the White Labs pack) into a pint of wort, which should grow into about 50B, then save another 50B (one third of the same pack) in the same pint jar, and pitch the remaining 70-80B (depending on date of manufacture, I'm assuming only a few weeks old) of the original pack into your 5 gallons of wort and hope that she takes off. (Again, assuming it's reasonably fresh, it should be fine. If not fresh, then I understand the concern.)

OR, just pitch the whole pack, and save some yeast post-fermentation. Less futzing, and likely similar ultimate results.

 

[Crafty_Brewer]

Wow, this is one aggressive yeast. I got this going last night before the latest reply on pitch rate, so this is 1.5 L of 1.037 starter wort with 45ml (half pack) of the next Gen pure pitch WLP-300.

I’m going to harvest one pint jar for the fridge before cold crashing it to hit my standard ale pitch rate of 0.75 m/ml/p, but if I harvest 2 pint jars that would reduce what goes into the fermentor to 0.375 m/ml/p; something to mull over before brew day hits I suppose.

 

[Crafty_Brewer]

This yeast definitely chews through some wort. I pitched and fermented at 68F, starting at 10:00 PM on the 4th, and it’s already slowed down. The first morning it had a thick layer of krausen and the airlock was bubbling away. Never got close to needing a blowoff, but this is a 7 gallon fermentor. It was kicking out some heat the first day too, but now the freezer only kicks on occasionally due to the ambient temp of the house being at about 74. I might just give it 10 days and assuming the FG is within spec, keg it.