Stepping Up A Starter

[Todd]

How 'bout that... change the batch volume to around 10.5 gallons and looky there - you need a 4 liter starter.

Carry on... nothing to see here folks. I'll be in the back licking the window.

[larry78cj7]

I noticed that on brew strong Doc said to mix the DME with hot water. When making my starter I generally mix the DME with cold water then add to the flask. Is there a reason to boil the water first?

[Sent From My iPhone]

The DME will probably dissolve faster and maybe clump less

[DiscoFetus]

Made my first starter last night, about 14 hours ago. No krausen yet, but its fizzy as hell when I shake it. Is this normal and I'm just not used to seeing it, or did I screw this up somehow. I used WLP568 into 2 c DME and around 1800 ml of water.

[Thirsty Boy]

You can tweak the calculator at Mr Malty to help you work out starter stepping up.

Say you want are brewing a 1.072 bock and you want 500billion cells. Thats either a 6L starter on a stirplate, or 5 fresh packs of yeast. But you can step up instead. You are going to pitch a fresh tube/smackpack into 1.0L of wort as your first step.

So what you do, is juggle the gravity and volume numbers in the calculator, till it tells you that you need a 1.01L starter - dont worry about what you are actually brewing, just muck about till it tells you what you need is 1.01L. Now look at the amount of cells it says that will be in that 1.01L starter. Remember that number. (its about 237billion cells)

OK, without changing anything else - go to the % viability input box and increase it. It will go up past 100%. Increase it till the line that says "vials or packs needed without starter" decreases to 1. It will be roughly the amount of cells you have divided by 100billion. so for our example, the percentage figure where the packs needed figure changes from 1.1 to 1.0 is 226% and it says no starter required.

so effectively you have one smackpack with 226% viability.

Go back to the start - plug in the gravity and volume of the beer you want to make - and set the viability to the percentage figure you just worked out (226%) - and now the calculator will tell you what size to make your "second" starter if you use the yeast from the first one. in this example it tells us we need a 2L starter to go from our 237billion cells to 500billion.

So you start with a fresh vial - make a 1L starter - then either decant the beer and add 2L of fresh wort to the yeast, OR assume that all the nutrient is gone, and add a further 1L of double strength wort (which when diluted with the first one = 2L of starter strength wort) - and this will give you the approximately 500billion cells you need. And your starter was never more than 2L.

Ive gone 1L - 2L - 4L and ended up with over 1000billion cells for a big batch of strong beer

Thats the way I do it anyway

Thirsty

[Mylo]

That... is.... f-ing genious. Are you sure you are from AUS?

Jamil - will this work? Does his numbers/process jive?


Mylo

[Dirk McLargeHuge]

I did an Amber once...

[Dirk McLargeHuge]

That... is.... f-ing genious. Are you sure you are from AUS?

Jamil - will this work? Does his numbers/process jive?


Mylo

I wish there was a "slack jawed amazement" smilie. And a flow chart.

Nice tip, Thirsty.

(and please, JZ, chime in.)