My new Hanna stir plates came today. I’m doing an APA this Monday. I had two smack packs of 1056 with birthdays of March 11, 13. So I used them both in 2 qts of 1.035. Its stirring nicely now. I’m going to chill and decanter Friday and run it again with 2 qts.
My APA is 5 gallons of 1.065. Does it sound like I will be on track for a proper pitch?
If I read that correctly, I think that’s more yeast then you need. I would have used just one pack of 1056 with 2L on the stir plate. I always check http://www.mrmalty.com/calc/calc.html for an estimate on my yeast count and starter amounts.
It seemed like I had ~1/3 viability with 3 month old smack packs. So I took a guess at two of them equalling 2/3 viability. Equal to one pack that is one month old. My beer will not be huge but big enough to need more than normal. Thus the extra 2000ml step in a couple days. I’d rather be a little high than too low again.
I’ll try to figure out Mr malty though. Thanks
Ah, I did read that wrong. I read it as May 11 & 13 instead of March (Not the first or last time I get the “M” months mixed up). You should be good w/ the 2 packs/ 2 qts on a stir plate w/out the extra step, but I don’t think that extra step would hurt. I’ve used slurry that was older than that (5 months) as an experiment on an APA in a 2L starter on a stir plate w/ just one step and it turned out well. I don’t plan on using yeast that old again, but you never know ;D
I just bought and installed Mr malty. Can’t get it to work. Stuck on hectoliters for wort volume
How irritating
The web version is free. I haven’t bought and tried out the mobile version yet. In the web version, you can go to “Preferences” tab and change the wort measurement.
Ok, rebooted my phone and now it accepts changes to inputs. What is the growth rate bar at the bottom?
Edit: I went to the site and figured out what the growth bar is for.
The Hanna stir plate I had burned out doing 2 liter starters, it was rated for 1 liter. It was the small one, there is now a bigger one available.
My stir starter handles a 5 liter starter.
I’ll be doing mostly 1000ml starts, a few 2000. I bough two of them so hopefully they last a couple years
You should take a listen/read Neva Parker’s Fermentation Mythbusters here: http://www.homebrewersassociation.org/pages/lets-brew/homebrewing-seminars/2012
She’ll go into why a 1L starter isn’t really worth it - 2L starters are much better.
I’ll look that up. But I just blew $4.95 on a Mr malty app. It tells me that a 1.060 ale with a one month old smack pack, requires only 1000ml of stir plate starter. A lager would be double that.
It’s true - growth depends on cell density and a 1L starter is too dense for much growth.
MrMalty says two March 11 packs in a 2L starter is enough. For the same cell density reason, pitching that into another 2L starter won’t result in much additional growth.
Could I split the slury into two 2000ml starters and go from there?
A 2 L starter should grow, roughly, 200 billion cells, so you should end up somewhere around 300-350 billion. That’s about 50% more than I would typically pitch into a 1.065 beer.
Split that into two more 2 L starters and they should each end up around 350-400 billion.
Copy that. I might do that and then brew to batches Monday
+1 to Neva Paker’s presentation. Very good info and I haven’t done a 1L starter since.
So, at 24 hrs I pulled the starter from the stir plate and put it in the fridge. It appears that by morning I will have about a half inch of slurry in the bottom of the 2000ml flask.
Can it sit like that for a few days, then decant and pitch?
Also I’m considering splitting that slurry between two 2000ml flasks and running them both for 24hrs in two qts 1.035 to build enough yeast for two 5 gal APAs. Would that be sufficient?
[/quote]
You should take a listen/read Neva Parker’s Fermentation Mythbusters here: http://www.homebrewersassociation.org/pages/lets-brew/homebrewing-seminars/2012
She’ll go into why a 1L starter isn’t really worth it - 2L starters are much better.
[/quote]
+1 to Neva Paker’s presentation. Very good info and I haven’t done a 1L starter since.
[/quote]
I wasn’t able to watch the one on AHA because I’ve forgotten my password. But, I caught one of her presentations on YouTube. What she was saying there was about the 1M cells per ml per degree plato rule. She said that you can play with flavor by pitch rate changes. Under pitching apparently causes more growth, big surprise, which increases this and that.
I found it interesting that pitching big reduces acetaldehyde and fusel but increases ester. Which makes sense. The next part caught my eye. Increasing dissolved O2 actually counters that by increasing acetaldehyde and fusels and decreasing ester. The takeaway I got was that O2 was easier but not necessarily better depending on what you wanted in your end product.