I live down the street from a pro brewer who recently was given some free yeast samples from BSI. He gave me one of his 1L sample packages. Pretty stoked since it is a German lager strain that no one else(Wyeast/ White Labs) offers! Does anyone know what the cell count might be in something like this? Was going to brew 10gal of Dunkel and of course didn’t want to underpitch. My pro brewer buddy didn’t think I would need a starter but he also had no idea what the cell count might be for the 1L sample? I know White Labs vials contain approx 100 b cells per 35ml but I don’t think I really want to extrapolate those numbers here.
1L of pure slurry…mother load there! i’d just use mr.malty calc to figure estimate…depending how long its been since harvest, i’d also make a starter.
Nice. Is it the Augustener or one of the Abby strains.
Some say WLP-860 = Augustener.
WLP-835 Lagar X rhymes with Kloster Andechs.
The Ettal or Weltenberger would be interesting. When living in Germany I had some of the Weltenberger beers, and those are very malty.
Wyeast suggests 1/2 liter per barrel for ales and 1 liter per barrel for lager. So it looks like you have enough to make about 31 gallons of average gravity lager if the amount is comparable between the two companies.
It is the Ettal strain. Kind of flying blind here…no info on the yeast from BSI website.
I would expect results similar to 34/70 and go from there.
Is it pure yeast or yeast mixed with break?
sounds like it’s pure yeast. a ‘sample’ pitch from a yeast lab.
That’s a metric truck load of yeast. Wyeast specs their commercial cultures as having 1.2 billion viable cells per milliliter, which means that one 1L of their yeast is guaranteed to contain 1.2 trillion viable cells. I suspect that that number is very conservative. If the OP received 1L of thick slurry, man, it could contain up to 3.0 trillion viable cells. To put things in perspective, 200 billion healthy, ready to go work cells will fully attenuate 5 gallons of lager wort (yes, I know that that number is lower than the yeast calculators spec). Three trillion is 15 times 200 billion.
With that said, I would treat it like cropped slurry, see what happens on the first pitch, and adjust my pitching rate based on the fermentation outcome. My rules of thumb are 100ml of slurry per five gallons of ale wort up to around 16 Plato and 200ml of slurry per five gallons of lager wort up to around 16 Plato. It the culture is relatively new, those volumes should get the job done. Remember, the number one thing that hold brewer back when dealing with unknown yeast is fear of failure. It’s only a batch of beer.
One last thing, my bank takes difficult to obtain yeast strain donations. ;D
Never had beers (or heard about) Ettal. Let us know what you think of the yeast.
Now that i the sample has been resting in the fridge I would say that it is approx 300-400 ml of thick yeast. So I still think I can get by with 10 gallons of lager without a starter.

Now that i the sample has been resting in the fridge I would say that it is approx 300-400 ml of thick yeast. So I still think I can get by with 10 gallons of lager without a starter.
If it’s 300 to 400 milliliters of pure thick yeast, then the cell count should be at least 800 billion cells.