Yeast Starters

[MrC]

I've been trolling through the forum looking for info/opinions on yeast starters. There's a few comments scattered throughout so I thought I create a thread for it.

What's you opinion on starters?
1L for Ales?
2L for Lagers?
Pitching warm vs. cool?

I've ordered a smackpack of lager yeast and need to make a starter for 21L of wort at 1.050. I was planning on a 1.5L starter, decanting spent wort, pitching at 15c then slowly cooling to 10c overnight.

I don't have a stir plate so I was planning on a lot of shaking.

[studio1]

and why is this? is he coming?

[Martin Bridges]

It wouldn't be much of a teaser campaign if I told you everything straight off, would it?! :-)

But yes, Jamil Zainasheff aka Mr Malty aka The Pope will be in Auckland very briefly in May. Look out for some sort of event being arranged.

[JoKing]

What dates, Martin? I need to arrange leave WELL in advance.

[MrC]

I am about to dump into a 1.2L starter - then I will repitch that into a 2L starter. Surely that will be enough yeast (aiming for thick slurry of about 150ml)
Yeah, that's what I'd do.

The Wyeast website says that 1 Activator pack is good for 5gal of wort up to an OG of 1.060. With that in mind, two activator packs should be sufficient for 40L of 1.045 wort. Your built-up starter should put you into that ball park.

[denimglen]

The Wyeast website says that 1 Activator pack is good for 5gal of wort up to an OG of 1.060

Yeah but Wyeast won't sell much if they told you that after six months you need nine packs and a 3000mL starter ;-)

I would pitch the pack into a 1000mL starter, let it ferment out completely, crash cool it in the fridge then see how much healthy yeast is in there - I reckon you'd be able to treat that yeast from the starter as a fresh pack of Wyeast.

[JR]

I am about to dump into a 1.2L starter - then I will repitch that into a 2L starter. Surely that will be enough yeast (aiming for thick slurry of about 150ml)

I reccon he will be a bit short...

Mr malty says he needs 351 Billion cells or 351billion in 42L is 8.4Million cells per litre. It also estimates that his smack pack is good for 10% viability.

In the wyeast calculator put 0.1 in the number of packs pitched into 1.2 litres then into 2 litres then into your 42 litres only gives you a pitching rate of 3.66million cells per litre. Thats quite a bit short of 8.4million cells per litre.

If you could increase your starter sizes to 3litres then into another 3 litres you would get 5.81 million cells per litre. Its not quite the proper pitching rate but at least you are over the halfway mark by a fair margin.

[studio1]

I still think the 10% viability thing is wildly inaccurate - I'm better to crash cool after the first 1.2L ferments out then measure the slurry before determining the next step I guess.

[JR]

It would be interestig to try and reverse engeneer it and see what your actual viability was from how much slurry you end up with.

[MrC]

For 21.5L of 1.047 ale with yeast that was manufactured yesterday:
- Wyeast web site tells me that I need 1 x Activator (1 x activator for up to OG 1.060)
- Mr Malty tells me that I need 2 x Activators

Who to believe...

[James P]

Mr Malty also does not take into consideration aeration, temperature of wort etc.... so added your grain of salt.

Edit: aeration of wort, not starter...

[JR]

A while ago now I realised on brew day that I had forgotten to make a starter. I had 22ish litres of 1.058 beer to make and I wasn't going to postpone brew day.
I decided that it says on the packet that it can be directly pitched into a beer of this size, surely they would not write that on the pack if it wasn't true. I just pitched it directly from the packet. Nothing happened for 3 days, I went on holiday for 3 or 4 days. I came back and there was no foam on the surface but there seemed to be some traces of stuff around the top edge of the liquid in the carboy to suggest that there had been a cm or so of foam at some stage. The beer was slowly bubbling. A couple of weeks later it was still cloudy as and the grav was still up around 1.019. I racked it to another carboy and stirred up the yeast a bit and took quite a bit of the yeast with it to its new carboy to try and stir it back into life. It bubbled a litle bit more and I let it sit around for about a month of finish off. It got to about 1.010 (lower than expected, infection??) and was only ever mediocre beer.

Since then I use Mr Malty and have had proper fermentations ever since. You probibly can get drinkable beer massively underpitching but it will be far better if you do it properly.

[James P]

You probibly can get drinkable beer massively underpitching but it will be far better if you do it properly.

I guess there may be a perception of quality as my own personal (and only) experience with underpitching was when I MASSIVELY underpitched into a lager awhile time ago. And no it was not drinkable in my opinion.

As for viability the rule of thumb I have used (which I got from google too) is for each month since production, leave it to proof for an extra day in the smack pack. And yes I have used yeast 12 months old without issue, and without adverse effects on the beer, again in my opinion.

I guess as we keep saying, you ask the same question of 10 home brewers and get 10 slightly (or wildly) different answers.