I have some old 1450 that I am going to use for Denny’s RIPA on Sunday, and Mr. Malty says that I need a 3 liter starter with 5 yeast packs, even with the settings at the less yeast packs setting. Would I be able to get away with stepping up one pack with 15 liters in a few 5 liter flasks?
The smack pack is from October of last year, BTW.
Are you making a 10 gallon batch? If so, a 5 liter starter is about right, if I recall correctly. Denny’s recipe has an OG of around 1.075, right?
Be mindful of your evaporation rate when you brew Denny’s recipe. I didn’t take notice where it says that his evaporation rate was 1.5 gallons per hour. The recipe is calcuated around that, so in the 75 minute boil, you would lose 1.88 gallons of wort due to evaporation. Even though I hit the pre-boil on the nose, my OG was low, because I didn’t realize that until after I had already started to add my hops. It’ll probably be a little more bitter than planned, but I’m alright with that! 8)
I am doing a 5 gallon batch. I am guessing that based on the age of the smack pack, I am required to use 8 liters and 5 smack packs on a stir plate to get a starter for a 5 gallon 1.072 batch.
My stir plate decided to take a rest when I plugged it in, so I will have to randomly shake it, so that should make things a bit more complicated and interesting for the next couple days.
I’d do a two-stage starter at this point. You should be starting with about 18 billion cells, so according to MrMalty (set for “intermittent shaking”) doing a 1.5 L starter, fermenting, chilling, decanting, and then stepping up to 2.5 L will get you the cell count you want (~260B).
http://seanterrill.com/2010/03/08/two-stage-starter-calculations/
I’ll give that a try. Thanks for the help.