I thought I'd spin this off of the yeast slurry discussion; don't want to take that over.
@renstyle mentioned listening to the Bru Lab episode 80 about yeast, which I just finished. It's got my mind reeling; not really sure what to think yet. In the episode, they reference an earlier episode (062) where work was done to show that yeast starters prepared at 1.008 gravity produced 500% more, healthy (quantity) yeast cells due to the yeast relying on respiration. The takeaway is you can use less extract to prepare the starter, and pitch far less than the online calculators suggest.
The reasoning seems logical, and I can usually be talked into considering anything with seemingly sound logic, but them referencing the work (from episode 62) that suggests a starter wort of 1.008 is best for growth (with enough nutrient/nitrogen)? It goes against ALL the online starter calculators to date, and I don't know what to think.
And the idea that when they asked themselves "how much nutrient/nitrogen do you use?", they started with 5g in 1-2L, then noted the Wyeast instruction is (for their product) 2.2g in 5gal - that comes out to 0.1g/1L, not 5g. Other resources note that if you use too much of these nutrient products, you can be doing harm by poisoning the yeast with too much nutrients such as Zinc.
@renstyle mentioned listening to the Bru Lab episode 80 about yeast, which I just finished. It's got my mind reeling; not really sure what to think yet. In the episode, they reference an earlier episode (062) where work was done to show that yeast starters prepared at 1.008 gravity produced 500% more, healthy (quantity) yeast cells due to the yeast relying on respiration. The takeaway is you can use less extract to prepare the starter, and pitch far less than the online calculators suggest.
The reasoning seems logical, and I can usually be talked into considering anything with seemingly sound logic, but them referencing the work (from episode 62) that suggests a starter wort of 1.008 is best for growth (with enough nutrient/nitrogen)? It goes against ALL the online starter calculators to date, and I don't know what to think.
And the idea that when they asked themselves "how much nutrient/nitrogen do you use?", they started with 5g in 1-2L, then noted the Wyeast instruction is (for their product) 2.2g in 5gal - that comes out to 0.1g/1L, not 5g. Other resources note that if you use too much of these nutrient products, you can be doing harm by poisoning the yeast with too much nutrients such as Zinc.