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.

[Horace]

Pre stir-plate I used an old (sanitised) coke bottle. Half filled with starter wort. Add yeast. Shake like buggery. Every so often would squeeze all old air/CO2 out and suck in fresh and shake like buggery again. Worked well but a stir plate is so much less effort and you can forget it.

Have tried an old fish tank pump and an air stone but had trouble keeping the hose immersed in the wort.

[Dan]

I usually use 1.5L starters for ales, with stir plate, I do 23-29 litre batches, pitch cool usually 16c and ferment at 18c - 20c, depends on the yeast some I pitch at 13c and ferment at 15c.

I used to use 2L starters with stir plate for lagers but have recently switched to around 5L starters fermented right out, decanted and use just the yeast or even easier dump a new lager wort on top of a previous, again depending on the yeast ive found most lager yeasts take a fair amount of time to ferment fully when using regular sized starters especially when pitching and fermenting cool, sometimes a month.

With most lager yeasts now I use either a 1/2 to 3/4 yeast slurry or a big attenuated and decanted starter and pitch at around 9oC and let it rise a degree or two.

Obviously im all in on cool pitching temps and ferment temps.

With lagers I used to pitch high temp 15-16c and ferment slightly cooler with a 1.5-2L starter and still got most of the time good or great results.
Now im getting faster cleaner results pitching, fermenting cool and using shitloads of yeast.

[jt]

I usually use 1.5L starters for ales, with stir plate, I do 23-29 litre batches, pitch cool usually 16c and ferment at 18c - 20c, depends on the yeast some I pitch at 13c and ferment at 15c

Hey Dan what ale yeasts are you fermenting that low with ?

I've been using W1275 at the bottom of the listed range - 16C - and I like the result so far, damnd good attenuation too .. if you have the patience

[Dan]

W1056 or w1272 american ale yeast, done a couple of kolsch styles recently with 1272 at 15C, tastes promising.

[Dale]

Hey guys, Have a yeast pitching question. I am making my starters based on Mr Malty and have just done my first rebrew using an amount of cake from a brew that was finished day before. So how do I really know if I have pitched enough yeast? Is that something that can be checked a day in by the amount of gravity dropped or only in the final taste of the beer?

Thanks

[denimglen]

Not really.

I think it's a lot harder than stated to over or under pitch a beer to the point of undrinkability. If there's too much yeast character pitch more next time, if not enough pitch less.

[Mike Neilson]

I can confirm that I have over pitched!! I had whole WLP001 yeast cake of a 1.040 beer with 22ibu, I used the whole cake to pitch a 1.125 Barleywine on with about 15ppm O2, Not good it probably only need at a max of 1/2 to 7/15 of the cake!! I thought it would be allright but the thing just got started than crashed!!!! Bad yeast slap on the hand for that!! As for Under pitch? As I say you need to know your yeast inside and out before you start claiming you under pitched!!

[denimglen]

Oh yeah, when I said the above I wasn't really including the extremes, like pitching onto a whole cake or only pitching one cell, but if you use the calculator, and stick to it reasonably well I don't reckon you'd have many dramas if you were plus/minus a bit.

[Mike Neilson]

Mr Malty didnt realy work for me on this occasion as I had loads of pure O2 and to much viable yeast, Not a problem Im still fixing it, its a work in progress!!

[denimglen]

My opinion on starters is http://www.mrmalty.com/calc/calc.html

[studio1]

OK here's my bug with Mr Malty's calcuator: I am going to brew a double batch (42L) 1.045 ale. I have a smack pack of 1968 manufactured Oct 09 (just inside the 6 month date). Now Mr Malty tells me that I need 9 packs and 3L of starter. Clearly that ain't gonna happen. 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 figure I can ignore the 'liquid yeast' section of the calculator and just use the 'repitching from slurry' calc using a viability of 90% for the slurry created in my starter. surely this is more accurate as this is freshly created yeast?

[Martin Bridges]

Well, you'll be able to complain to the man himself in May......(he says, subtly starting a teaser marketing campaign).