Wyeast starter with houblonmonstre triple ipa

[rdkirk86]

So the houblonmonstre has an og of 1.082, so I was planning on making a starter with my wyeast and "building it up twice" because I only have a 1000 ml flask and it is good for a beer with up to 1.080 og. I was wondering if there was such thing as adding too much yeast, or if i could get away with not building it up. Also, on a side note, what would happen if I sprinkled on some dry yeast with my wyeast?

 

[Kentunkel]

So the houblonmonstre has an og of 1.082, so I was planning on making a starter with my wyeast and "building it up twice" because I only have a 1000 ml flask and it is good for a beer with up to 1.080 og. I was wondering if there was such thing as adding too much yeast, or if i could get away with not building it up. Also, on a side note, what would happen if I sprinkled on some dry yeast with my wyeast?

There is a such thing as too much yeast but underpitching is a more common problem. Overpitching can cause under attenuation from the yeast dropping out after the initial feeding frenzy instead of finishing up and conditioning the beer.

If you aren't familiar, the yeast pitching calc at mrmalty dot com is a great free tool to calculate starters. You may find you can reach the proper pitch rate with starters, and skip buying dry yeast.

Mixing yeasts can be tricky. It could work out great or you could get characteristics from the second strain that you didn't select for in the original strain. (ex. Low flocculation, ester production) So be mindful of the profile for both. For instance, if you're using wyeast 1056, safeale-05 would be a good dry yeast to select.

Pitching dry yeast directly into wort drops your viabilty by 50%. In the dehydrated state, the yeast cells cannot control what passes through their membrane so its recommended that you rehydrate in preboiled tap water THEN pitch.