How much slurry for starter?

[idigg]

Quick questions, never done this before. I am bottling a ESB tomorrow, that will have a very clean US-05 yeast cake. I am brewing a Pumpkin ale Saturday, and I actually want to make a starter tomorrow because I want to have very active yeast for the Saturday brew.

How much slurry should I use for the starter? According to Mr Malty I need 105ml of slurry for the whole batch, which is just under 1/2 cup of fresh slurry. If I'm making a starter, how much slurry should I use?

Thanks for any help
justin

 

[nukebrewer]

I don't remember where I read it, but I read that you can assume a mL of thick slurry contains 100 billion viable cells, so just plug that into the calculator at http://www.yeastcalc.com which allows you to cutmomize your starting cell count. Just adjust until you have the right pitch rate.

 

[StMarcos]

I don't remember where I read it, but I read that you can assume a mL of think slurry contains 100 billion viable cells, so just plug that into the calculator at http://www.yeastcalc.com which allows you to cutmomize your starting cell count. Just adjust until you have the right pitch rate.

There's also 100 billion in a vial of wl, which is larger than 1mL I reckon

 

[nukebrewer]

A White Labs vial also isn't thick slurry. If you let the yeast in a White Labs vial settle out, you can see that it's really not that much.

 

[Homebrew35]

How old is the esb? Why not wash the yeast and then pitch a half cup of slurry. No starter needed. Maybe pitch the slurry into a small 500ml starter to wake it up.

 

[philosofool]

I don't remember where I read it, but I read that you can assume a mL of thick slurry contains 100 billion viable cells, so just plug that into the calculator at http://www.yeastcalc.com which allows you to cutmomize your starting cell count. Just adjust until you have the right pitch rate.

This figure is wrong. There are about 1 billion cells in 1mL, not 100 billion.

 

[idigg]

I'm bottling tonight and I picked up a 1gallon glass jug. I decided I'm going to wash the yeast, and pour into 3-4 mason jars. Never did this before but it seems easy. I'm brewing Friday so I should be okay to just pitch 1 jar into my batch. Thanks for the advice

justin

 

[nukebrewer]

This figure is wrong. There are about 1 billion cells in 1mL, not 100 billion.

Yeah, you're absolutely correct. I knew my number had to be off when I picked up a White Labs vial from the LHBS today and saw that there was much more than a mL in there. I apologize to the OP for the misinformation.

 

[philosofool]

I'm bottling tonight and I picked up a 1gallon glass jug. I decided I'm going to wash the yeast, and pour into 3-4 mason jars. Never did this before but it seems easy. I'm brewing Friday so I should be okay to just pitch 1 jar into my batch. Thanks for the advice

justin

Yes. Washing is easy. Sanitize everything, including the water (by boiling.) Add water (maybe 1 qt) to your trub and yeast in the fermenter, pour it to your jug. Cap the jug and shake vigorously to break up any clumps. Allow it to sit until you have a dark layer on the bottom (about 20 minutes); the liquid should still be very cloudy with yeast, but the other stuff is almost all settled out. Then decant the cloudy liquid into the sanitized jars, cap, and refrigerate. After about an hour, you should have a good layer of yeast on the bottom of the jars.

That yeast is very healthy and can be pitched with no starter as long as you use it in 1 week or so. If you separate that batch into 4 jars of equal volume, one jar would be ample for a normal gravity (up to 1.060) beer. Your slurry here should be about 1 billion/mL, so you can use that to measure your pitching rate.

Honestly, I've had many successes with straight-from-the-vial pitches that technically should have had 50% more yeast than I pitched. Badly under or over pitching isn't a good idea, and strong beers do like a healthy dose of yeast, but I think many brewers get carried away with worries about pitching rates.