I've saved the dregs from 4 bottles of Weihenstephan Vitus to make a starter. Roughly how many yeast cells can be expected from a single bottle? I'm trying to figure out how many steps and how large the starter(s) should be. Thanks.
how many yeast cells in a 12oz unfiltered brew? Question for making a starter
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It's really hard to say. I would run a biiiig starter and let it spin for a bit. From there, you could measure in a graduated cylinder or something else to accurately measure the yeast cake that settles and then plop that into a slurry calculator to give you a rough estimate of your cell count. Hope this helps get you pointed in the right direction.
I would start small and low gravity wort. I'd go with 1.020 wort and 10x volume. So if you have 10ml of dregs add 100ml of low grav wort. You might want to decant and repeat that a couple times before moving to something larger. What I'll sometimes do is flame the bottle opening and add my low grav starter wort directly to the bottle with the dregs to about half full, and once it's done decant it off, and do it again but fill it up most of the way this time. Then I'll pitch that into a normal 1L 1.040 starter, see where I'm at and go from there.
As far as cell count, you're gonna either have to approximate or actually count them with a microscope (which would be the ideal). After a few steps, you can use a yeast harvesting slurry calculator to approximate what you actually have. You're starting with beat up yeast in small numbers, not a fresh pitchable from a lab, so you shouldn't expect the normal starter calculators to be useful.
Be very attentive to off-smells and aromas doing this. Any contaminant organisms will be propped up along with your yeast. If you can work under sterile conditions (autoclave, flame, etc) you should. If you're ever going to pick up an infection this will be the likely way.
As far as cell count, you're gonna either have to approximate or actually count them with a microscope (which would be the ideal). After a few steps, you can use a yeast harvesting slurry calculator to approximate what you actually have. You're starting with beat up yeast in small numbers, not a fresh pitchable from a lab, so you shouldn't expect the normal starter calculators to be useful.
Be very attentive to off-smells and aromas doing this. Any contaminant organisms will be propped up along with your yeast. If you can work under sterile conditions (autoclave, flame, etc) you should. If you're ever going to pick up an infection this will be the likely way.
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