Harvesting and using yeast from a slurry

Ingredients
1

I’m planning a brewday in the next few weeks where I will be brewing many 1-gallon mini-batches of Pale Ale to test out a bunch of hops that I haven’t tried yet. I’m figuring on 0.8 gallons of approx 1.050 wort into the fermenter for each batch.

I was planning on making a fairly big starter and pitching a measured amount of slurry into each batch. I’ve never done that before - do I just crash chill the starter, decant off all the starter liquid, then measure out how much I need from the yeast cake? I crash my starter in a 1-gallon food grade bucket, so I can just reach in with a sanitized measuring spoon and scoop out what I need. Mr Malty says I would need 14 mL of yeast per batch, so I was just going to use 1 measuring tablespoon (15mL) per batch.

Does that sound right? Any other suggestions or tips?

2

I think that will work for you.  You’re talking about pitching fairly thick yeast from slurry, right?

3

Yeah. I was planning on decanting all the starter beer off the top and just scraping off the cake from the bottom of my bucket.

4

Are you sure you’ll only boil off 0.2 gallons?  Despite what some people say, evaporation rate isn’t a percentage that stays constant for all volumes.  Unless you have a tall, slender vessel, you might end up with only a half gallon or less after 60 minutes.

5

I think he intends to brew a larger batch of wort and split it .8 gallons per container as a range of data points.

6

I’m doing extract batches with only a 15 minute boil so I think this will be pretty close to 0.2 gallons boiloff.

Doing only a 40-45ish IBU “first wort” addition once the wort gets to 140F, a 0.25 oz flameout addition and 1/2 oz of dry hops. I’m hoping to get at least 5 or 6 batches in, but I have enough hops to try and fermenter space for 9 batches.