Yeast Experiment

[TopFlatBrwr]

In a week or two I'm planning to brew a 5 gallon batch of an old IPA recipe. I originally brewed this recipe with Wyeast 1056, but wanted to experiment with this next batch. I recently bought five 1-gallon carboys and started farming out my own yeast. I'm planning to brew one normal 5 gallon batch but split the wort up into the 1-gallon carboys and pitch 5 different yeasts. The yeast slurry is stored in 250ml mason jars in my fridge. All of the yeast was farmed from new Wyeast smack packs and pitched in a quick dme wort that I cold crashed while the fermentation was at high krausen.

Outside of a starter w/ stir plate (I only have 1), what do you think is the best way to re-activate all 5 of my yeast strains at once. I was thinking about putting the mason jars in a warm water bath to raise their temp back up to about 25C. Would that be sufficient?

Thanks

 

[HopOnHops]

If the slurries are over a month old you might want to start them to reduce lag time. I doubt the yeast will fail if you don't start them. Fermenation just may take longer

 

[progmac]

it depends on the quantity of yeast. for a one gallon batch, you won't need much. i expect you could do nothing and pitch them directly and have plenty of yeast.

 

[mtnagel]

Need more info.

What is the OG of the beer you are making?
Did you use the whole smack pack or did you split it up?
How old was the yeast when you made your starters?
What size starter did you make and did you use your stir plate, nothing or shaking?

I'd estimate out about how much yeast you had before pitching. My guess is you will be overpitching if you took a full ~100 billion yeast cells and even if you made a small starter and/or the yeast was old, you will get some growth. And unless you are making a high OG beer, you won't need many yeast cells for 1 gallon.

 

[TopFlatBrwr]

Hey Guys, thanks for the responses. Here's a bit more detail about my starters and beer:

-The beer OG: 1.073
-The yeast was mfg in april 2013
-I used a full smack pack and DME to make an initial starter 3L 1.033 OG starter.
-I didn't use the stir plate and just shook the starter every so often because I did all 5 batches at once and used 1 gallon carboys for them.
-I then broke each starter into 5 mason jars.
-Beersmith says I need about 50 billion cells to ferment a 4 liter batch with 1.073 OG.

Thoughts?