Yeast starter propagation steps

[prjectmayhem]

Is there anything wrong with not cold crashing in between yeast propagation steps? I want to take a 750mL starter and add that whole volume into a 2.7L volume of wort (total wort volume 3.5L, or 5X the original starter volume). Ideally I want to aim for the OG of this 3.5L to be ~1.040. Does this process make sense?

I am afraid of cold crashing a lager yeast strain in only 24hrs and selecting for highly flocculent cells and giving a poor fermentation. Any ideas/suggestions would be helpful

 

[chickypad]

If you're using a stirplate it looks like you would get about the same yield doing one big 3.5 step vs. the two steps (this according to yeastcalc using Kai's calculations for stir plate). If it's just intermittent shaking then that seems to be where you get the jump with the second step. Not sure how adding the first starter beer to the second step will affect the yield. It's only going to be about 1% ABV once you dilute it in that larger volume, maybe it's not a big factor. Hopefully someone more knowledgeable will chime in. If you've got a stirplate though I'd just do one step, unless you have really old yeast.

 

[day_trippr]

While I allow time for crashing each step, if you have a large enough flask I don't think the final cell count is going to be much different between crashing an initial step or not. But I'd still crash the last step before pitching...

Cheers!