first liquid yeast

[Louz]

Brew day's tomorrow and I'm using a liquid yeast for the first time. Imperial yeast Barbarian A04.

Should I make a starter for this? I've never made a starter before.

 

[flars]

Whether you will need to make a starter or not depends upon the age of the yeast and the estimated OG of the beer you will brew with it. This is the pitch rate/starter calculator I use. The calculator also has an over build option so you can harvest some of the freshly propagated yeast to use in the next starter. Plug some numbers in and play with it just to see how age affects cell viability and how different starter sizes affect how many new cells can be propagated.
http://www.brewunited.com/yeast_calculator.php

Starters are easy. Sanitation is paramount just the same as it is for handling the wort for your beer. Starters can be made on a stir plate with an Erlenmeyer flask or a big pickle jar with intermittent swirling.

You may need to make a small vitality starter and pitch the entire starter at high krausen with your brew day being tomorrow.

 

[Louz]

Date on the bag is 3/8/18. Target OG is 1.075. NEIPA.
According to that calculator, I need 310 billion cells, and I only have 93 billion viable cells

 

[AZBeer]

I always make a starter. You should be able to make a starter in one day, although that's a bit tight.

I usually make a starter, let it go for 24-48 hours, then cold crash it for 12-24 hours, then pull it out on brew day and decant the starter beer off the yeast (fancy way of saying I pour off the starter beer and just leave the yeast cake behind. Leave just a little bit of the starter beer behind, so when you are ready to pitch you can just swirl it around to get the yeast into suspension and pour it in.

Once you get that down, then you can start working on overbuilding your starters, and then you can stretch your yeast out for multiple batches.

 

[flars]

I think you may need to postpone your brew day. Under pitching can cause the yeast to produce some off flavor esters. Not a bad change in plans to produce the best beer possible.

 

[Louz]

This yeast came with an extract kit. I'm not real happy that they suggested a yeast that will not work with the kit.

 

[flars]

The yeast is right for the style but liquid yeasts will almost always require a starter. When using liquid yeast almost any near fresh yeast will require a starter if the estimated OG is over 1.052. It is just part of the learning curve in the world of home brewing. Sometimes that curve can be very frustrating. We have survived and conquered, eventually.

 

[kh54s10]

Wyeast and White Labs used to contain only about 100 billion cells at packaging. Imperial advertises 200 billion. Make sure you start from that cell count. In most cases I always suggest the starter. And in this case I still suggest it. But if you are not comfortable making a starter I would go ahead and pitch without one. The underpitch would not be so severe as with other liquid yeasts.

 

[Louz]

I guess I'll bite the bullet and learn to make a starter.

 

[VirginiaHops1]

Can someone explain that website? It seems like if you don't select stir plate as method of aeration, then it always takes you to the 2nd or 3rd step, where it asks you again for method of aeration(and I again selected manual shaking). What is it saying, that you need to use multiple starters if you don't have a stir plate, to get adequate yeast levels?

 

[VirginiaHops1]

Ok I think I get it. I had the flask size set at default 2L, so I guess the starter was too small. So I guess the idea is you only use 2nd/3rd/4th steps if your flask size is too small to get the amount of yeast cells you need?

 

[Rob2010SS]

Ok I think I get it. I had the flask size set at default 2L, so I guess the starter was too small. So I guess the idea is you only use 2nd/3rd/4th steps if your flask size is too small to get the amount of yeast cells you need?

You are correct. If you don't achieve your target cell count in the first step, it will tell you to do a second step. This usually involves letting the first step ferment out, cold crash it for 12-24 hours to drop out the yeast, decant the old starter beer, and then add more fresh wort on top of the yeast in the flask. You do that until you achieve the desired amount of cells.