Shaken not stirred for Lager

I am going to do a Czech Pale Premium Lager next.  I follow Mark’s strategy of using a large vessel to shake the wort/yeast and then pitch the lot into the fermenter ~6 hours later.

What is the thinking with lagers?  My thought is to step it up with 4 iterations, i.e.: pitch a pack of yeast into a quart of wort, wait till it is finished fermenting that, decant and go again, timing the last for brew day.

Am I missing anything?  What do you do?

If the yeast is fresh, do it once. There is a maximum density of yeast in a given volume. You’d just continually maintain that count.

Would you need to pitch twice as much yeast, two packs, in the shaken quart? In keeping with the twice as much yeast thought for a lager.

Adding more yeast won’t change the fact that the starter will hit max density and start fermenting, it will just happen sooner in the starter.

Interesting.  I may need to abandon this method for the old 5 liter Erlenmeyer on a stir plate to get the cell count I want.

That’s cool man. You don’t need to make a massive starter, but do what you need to do.

Jim, do any lagers lately?

Do I understand then, one yeast pack shaken starter, will reach the desired density in the wort with plenty of time to properly ferment?

It’s worked for me and others. The idea is to pitch when the yeast is in exponential growth. Underpitch by half and the issue is gone in 90min, under pitch by 4 and your are good at 3 hours.

I’m sure I’ll be corrected, but pitch rates are from slurry with no starter for commercial breweries that are simply pumping yeast from a brink.

For 6gal lager or ales or high gravity ales, i use 1 smack pack on 1200ml oxygenated starter made morning of brew day, run at main beer pitching temp, pitch the whole thing that night. Massive ales get extra oxygen. I used to use two starters for lagers but found it’s not necessary.

I use oxygen for starters and the beer.

Thanks Jim

Welcome. When I do lagers I chill my canned 1.040 in my fermentor chest to 50F the night before. So on brew day the yeast goes from fridge to 50F starter to 50F main beer. At about 50% ADF I pull the temp probe from the beer to ambient and bump the chest temp to 68F. Letting the beer free rise to 68 ambient. This works reliably for me.

I do that exact thing for my ales.  I just don’t do many lagers… and none since I started doing the ‘shaken not stirred’ method.  Now I just wish I could find some Wyeast 2001.

WLP800 is also Urquell H-strain, same as WY2001.  I think I recall LHBS said the Wyeast is either being discontinued or shifted to a specialty, not always available

EDIT Checked their site, it’s now Private  Collection, the limited release line

2206 is pretty hard to beat, just sayin

What do you like about it?

Pretty much everything. Low/no sulphur, balanced profile, work horse, drops bright easy.

Sold!

I only do a couple lager brew days a year anymore. So I was looking for a quality all-around yeast, focusing on Bavarian styles but capable of doing well with pils and occasionally an American. I’ve tried several and finally landed on 2352. But it’s a PC, so I learned to plate and slant, which was fun for a while. I kept hearing people sing praise about 2206 so I tried it and BOOM. I never looked back

FWIW, I believe Omega OYL-114 is supposed to be the Augustiner strain.

Jim,  I’m wondering if my experience is typical to yours.

I brewed the beer Thursday, 4/26/18.  Pitched yeast @ 21:30, at 50*.  One pack of Wyeast 2206, dated 3/31/18, in Shaken not Stirred method (one Qt. wort).  Which was started at ~12:00… maybe a bit late?
First airlock activity today (4/28) 09:00.  ~36 hours.