Do you think I need a starter?

Ingredients
1

I’m brewing a 1.035 bitter, 5.5 gallons in fermenter.
I have a smack pack manufacture date 7-18-15.
I have read small beers with fresh yeast one doesn’t need to make a starter.
I know this is a small beer but does the yeast considered “fresh”?
Brewers Friend yeast calc. says I need a one liter starter.

*Cells Available: *
77 billion cells
*Pitch Rate As-Is: *
0.42M cells / mL / °P
*Target Pitch Rate Cells: *
137 billion cells
*Difference: *
-60 billion cells

*Starter Size (L) Gravity (1.xxx) Growth Model and Aeration *
* 1 1.036                        C.White shaken*
*DME Required: *
3.6 oz, 102.7 g
*Growth Rate: *
1.2
Inoculation Rate: 77.0M cells/mL
*Ending Cell Count: *
170 billion cells
*Resulting Pitch Rate: *
0.93M cells / mL / °P
Starter meets desired pitching rate!

2

Should you make a starter? - sure
Would I make a starter? - most likely not

3

Tell your yeast you are putting them ina 5.5 gallon starter.

4

Too funny.

5

I’d probably use just the smack pack for that too, given the freshness and the 1.035 OG.

6

I just got an image of Jim as Gene Hackman in Hoosiers. The line about not talking about the next step is oddly appropriate.

7

Just LMAO. Good stuff. Great movie, too.

8

No.  A few years back Neva (sp?) of White Labs put on a presentation at NHC.  Her recommendation was not to make a starter smaller than 1 L because you are essentially trading very health yeast for more less healthy yeast.

9

Does anyone else absolutely love having Jim here? :D  I think I smile at every post.

10

+1

11

Skip the starter.  Like Jim said.  :slight_smile:

12

British Brewers under pitch by U.S. standards. They want the esters from some stress on the yeast. One vial will be fine.

13

+1 agreed with everyone;  i’m using one pouch no starter of pure pitch wlp002 in my eng pale ale, 1.052 OG.

14

I have to agree with everyone on not doing a starter.  Heck, your est OG is lower than the OG on my average starter anyway.

Paul

15

Thanks for the input.
I ended pitching without a starter.
My OG ended up at 1.043.
Ever since I started using BeerSmith my gravities have been high.
I could never figure out how to change the mash efficiancy. But I have it figured out now. Brewed a second batch and hit my gravities dead on.
I don’t understand why Beer Smith can’t just let you enter a mash efficiancy in the mash profile. I had to work backwards changing brew house efficiancy until my predicted mash efficiancy matched what I am actually getting.
I also think the way it figures batch sparge water additions is confusing.
Sometimes it gives me something like

◯ Batch sparge with 4 steps (Drain mash tun , 1.52gal, 1.52gal, 1.52gal) of 168.0 F water

◯ Add water to achieve boil volume of 6.98 gal

16

Always remember that as great as Beersmith is, it’s not instructions about how to brew.  It’s a tool you use to help you brew the way you want to.

17

I get that.
I’m just trying to figure out how to best use the tool. :slight_smile:

18

My trick is this… When I first enter a recipe, I use a profile that has my end of boil kettle volume (5.5 for me) entered in the batch volume field with zero losses to the kettle or fermenter. This will make the efficiencies match. From there I switch to a profile for the equipment I will be using. I do the switch with or without using the scale function depending on the equipment and batch size.

I recently switched to beersmith because I feel it has the best chance for future development and is cross platform. That being said, it is missing a lot of features that other solutions offer. Don’t get me started on how useless the phone app is.

19

Exact same thing I do. And I agree about the phone app - not good.

20

This is what I did seemed to work.
https://youtu.be/bIoeFuNbDbU