Help with yeast starter

[Tarpon87]

So I will be brewing a Ten Fidy clone I found on HBT this Sunday. Recipe calls for 1056 to ferment with. I have 1 pack of it that is a few weeks old. Mr Malty says I need 390 billion cells for a 1.106 OG beer. I have a 1L Erlenmeyer flask, mason jars, several growlers, 3 cans of NB fast pitch starter wort and some yeast nutrient. Using what I have, how would I go about stepping this up to get close to my pitch rate? I know having only a 1L flask is making it more difficult but thought I may be able to use growlers in conjuction, or make a 1L starter, decant and put half in a sanitized mason jar, then make another 1L starter with the other half? I can get another pack of yeast but not until Thursday(if its in stock at the LHBS), and I will probably pick up some DME to make my own starter wort for future batches. How should I go about this?

 

[hottpeper13]

This is my procedure. First, I can starter in 1qt jars at 1.040. I use a 2L flask, you use your 64oz growler. I put 1 qt starter in flask with yeast on stir plate,let go for ~24 hrs,then pour 200ml into a 250ml flask for the yeast bank. At this point if it's a 1.040 - 1.050 I will pitch whats left,all of it(no decanting for me) and it's still working but just after full krausen. If the wort is above that I start a day sooner and add another qt of starter to the 2L flask and let go ~24 more hrs and pitch all of it. I did this to 3 - 5.5 gal of RIS at 1.110 and although not 1056 it had the foam cap in the morning. Haven't checked yet,these big beers go for 4 weeks before I hydrometer them as long as the ferment goes well,which these are, still under pressure at the 3 week mark.

 

[jmartie13]

I looked up those NB fast pitch starter wort, pretty cool, I hadn't heard of them. It looks like they come in a 16oz can and you dilute with 1 can of water. Three cans would get you 2.8L of a 1.040 wort. I played around with Brewer's Friend pitch rate calculator and found if you start with 1.4L starter with shaking it would get you 227 billion cells, then if you stepped up to your remaining 1.4L with shaking it would hit 389 billion. Assuming you have the 100 billion to start. So, you could probably just use a couple growlers. I'm relatively new to the starter world, maybe someone else has a better idea!

 

[DurtyChemist]

I'd make a starter as usual, decant all but 250 mL into mason jars, pitch a new starter and do it again. With the third starter I'd pitch everything. The reason I'd decant so much is to keep your inoculation rate high. If you just decant and add more starter wort you'll be growing fewer and fewer cells. Decanting yeast will actually help you grow more.

I'd also look into a 2L flask as it's really easy to make a 1.5L starter, harvest 500 mL for saving and still have enough to pitch for fermentation. It's easier than washing yeast cells and much cleaner yeast stored.

 

[Tarpon87]

A 2L flask is on the list, but I wont have it in time for this weeks brews. I got the 1L starter going last night for the stout.

 

[jodell]

I adapted Northern Brewers approach and it makes it really easy. I buy 3lbs of DME at at time, and make the whole thing up with a gravity of 1.080. add yeast nutrients, and bottle all of them and put them in the fridge. Sanitation must be spot on.

When it comes time to use, I pull one out, dump it in a saucepan, fill the bottle with water, dump that in the sauce pan, and get it to 90ish degrees, put that in my flask, and add yeast. works like a charm.

 

[Tarpon87]

ok so first 1l starter is done, in fridge cold crashing. Looking at the brewers friend calculator, if I repitch the entire thing I should end the second step with a cell count around 280B. If I decant, pour off half and repitch with just half from step one I would end up with around 260B. Same holds true with the 3rd step (assuming still a 1L starter volume), if I never split and go a 3rd step I would end around 420B, If I split the second I would end up around 370B. I am maybe the least knowledgeable person on this but logically it seems the more yeast I use to make a starter the less replication they would need to do, but the calculator is saying the opposite...is this correct?

According to the calculator the best route, for what I have available to use, is to repitch everything from the first starter into another 1L to get me to 280B and then repitch all of that into a 2L which would get me to 503B, which puts me shy of what brewersfriend says I will need but is more than what Mr. Malty says.