So digging through the posts i cant find a answer to my question.
So I making a lager with a gravity of 1.050 and i was on mr malty and it told me that i need a starter of 7.86 litres or 2 gallons. That seems a little big isnt it?
what should the size be?
Next question if i want to make a gallon starter do i make a gallon of wort at a gravity of about 1.040 and add one wyeast activator pack and let it forment for about 24 hours then add that to my wort?
Or how do I do it?
I need a idiot proof answer bc i am trying to figure out this yeast starter thing lol
I’d believe what mrmalty tells you. For a starter that big, you want to make it well in advance so you can decant the spent wort. You don’t want 2 gal. of that stuff going into your beer.
So would I make 2 gallons of wort and add the yeast packet then let it ferment out then decant the liquid then add it to the wort. Or do I need to make the starter in steps?
Yeah, make the starter, let it ferment out, and then refrigerate it for 24-48 hours to get all of the yeast to floc and settle. Then decant the starter beer and pitch only the yeast.
You can also reduce the size of the necessary starter by using “intermittent shaking” rather than a simple starter. Just shake up / vigorously swirl the starter as often as you can while it’s fermenting. That will blow off some of the CO2 and hopefully pull in some additional oxygen.
A two gallon sounds big is that right?
I am looking at site and they say anything from 1000ml is good to a gallon I am lost.
So what I see is according to mr malty I need to add 2 pounds of dme to 2 gallons of water to make a starter the right size for my 5 gallon 1.050 og lager.
Yeah, 2 gallons is big. It’ll do the job but that’s a lot of starter to deal with and a lot of DME to go through.
According to mrmalty for five gallons of a 1.050 lager and selecting “intermittent shaking” from the drop down box you need a starter of about 4.25 qts. Now that’s assuming 100% viability, which is pretty much impossible if you’re pitching from a smack pack.
So what I would do is make a 1 qt starter with 3.5 oz of DME, let it ferment out, crash it in the fridge for a day or two, decant it off leaving just the yeast, and then pitch another 4 qts of starter wort (made with about 13 - 14 oz of DME). Ferment, crash, decant, and pitch.
Yeah, a stir plate would be ideal. I’m assuming he doesn’t have one. One of these days I’m going to get around to picking one up myself. It’s on my wishlist.
One thing I’m not sure about mrmalty is whether the calculator factors in different growth curves for different inoculation rates. I think doing stepped starters, like doing 2L > 4L would result in about the same growth as one 8L starter, but I’ll have to doublecheck my math when I’m not at work.
I think it does but it bases that inoculation rate on the % viability of (I’m assuming) the 100B cells you’d find in a fully viable smack pack. So theoretically you could play around with the % to get proper inoculation rate for a stepped starter. Since I’m just estimating the amount of cells I’m pitching anyway I take the laz…er, pragmatic approach. If the calculator is indicating a starter greater than 4L I do an initial step, somewhere in the 0.5 - 2L range depending on how much I think I need to achieve.
I’m certain there is a more scientific way to approach this using the calculator.
The Sean Terrill site is pretty cool. Probably my favorite thing about the internet is you can almost instantly find the answers to any “I wonder if. . .” questions. I haven’t tried to trick MrMalty yet, but I plan to look into that.
From my pen-and-paper calculations based on the chart in “Yeast”, I think doing one smack pack with 100b cells, a 2L > 4L stepped starter would yield 430b cells, while 100b cells in an 8L starter would yield 400b total cells. So you’ll get marginally more yeast, and use 2L less wort, but have a little bit more hassle. Of course, I was never a great math student, so I could be wrong.
Nice. That comment was actually bait for you since I had a vague memory of you posting something about this in the past. ;D
Here’s a question though. I applied those instructions to the OP’s situation. For this simulation I assumed a viability of 70% just to have a number. I put in a volume of 4.98 gallons and an OG of 1.030 to get to 2 liters of starter required for the first step which calculates 213B cells. I then put 213 into the viability field and set the OG to 1.050 and the volume to five gallons. Also set to Lager and Intermittent Shaking.
The result is that for the second step it’s telling me I would need 1.48L of starter for the second step to achieve 350B cells. That’s obviously not doubling the volume for the second step. I’ve tried a couple of other scenarios and got similar results. What am I doing wrong?
So if i was making a ale…
2 liter starter for simple starter or 1 litre with skaking or stir plate?
If i was making a Lager
8 liter simple starter or 4 liter with shaking or stir plate?
Now lets say i was making a 2 liter starter
If i am making the starter does the DME and water volume equal 2 liters or is it 2 liters of water plus the DME so i would be over 2 liters.
I apologize for the dumb question but i am still a little lost and websites are vague and everyones info is different and they all look at different variables.
It would be awesome if you could explain this to me like you would a young child lol
So you start out with barley water. Barley water is food for yeast. Yeast eats barley water for dinner and grows big and strong. If you have one plate of dinner and lots of yeasts, they have to share the dinner so none of them gets enough food. If you have too many plates of dinner, they can’t eat all of it before they get tired.
ckpash just do what I advised earlier for this beer.
Add 3.5 oz of DME to 1 qt water. Boil it for a few minutes, chill, pitch the smack pack. Let it ferment out.
Put it in the fridge for 24-48 hours and let all the yeast settle out. Then decant off the starter beer so you just have the yeast cake at the bottom.
Cook up another batch of starter wort with 13 oz of DME in 4 qts water. You want to end up with 4 qts of final volume give or take but you’ll lose some volume during your short boil of the starter wort.
Chill that down and add to the yeast cake. Shake/swirl it up and then let that ferment out. Repeat the chill/decant routine and then pitch to your beer.
Get this starter under your belt and then worry about figuring out the differences in results between intermittent shaking and a stir plate. Don’t worry too much about exact volumes and gravities this time around. You’re making a starter and you’ll get a good pitch of yeast even if it’s not exactly right. As long as your sanitation practices are good you’ll be well ahead of the game and will make good beer. RDWHAHB.
