I took this yeast from the carboy on the 11th of March.
I swirled the yeast cake with some boiled and cooled water
and dumped into sanitized jar, and put it in the fridge. I did not
do any other rinsing of the yeast. It is WLP 007 Dry English.
I was planning on making a small starter to get it activated.
Looking at this sample you can see a small thin layer on top.
Is that the yeast and the rest all trub? If that thin layer is the
yeast it won’t be enough and I’ll have to use my back up dry
yeast pack.
I was under the impression that when repitching
a slurry that is relatively fresh one didn’t need
to make a starter? The Mr Malty calculator says I
need 90 mil of slurry. I was just doing the starter
to wake it up a bit. Got to heat some sparge water
and pitch that yeast into the starter.
Thanks
This is correct, a starter is not necessary if the slurry is fresh. But a starter can be good to wake up the yeast as you said. It’s ok to make a ‘wake up’ starter smaller than you would for growing yeast, you just want to make sure that you do not let it ferment to completion. Letting it ferment all the way will do more harm than good as the yeast uses up glycogen reserves to get ready to ferment then has to return to dormancy without growing any new cells.
Just to make sure, you are putting 90 mL of slurry into the starter, not just a couple of teaspoons, right? You can do it either way, but if you are only taking a fraction of the 90 mL do not expect the small starter to grow enough yeast for the batch, you would need a larger starter or a step up to get enough.
