Agree with mr. malty yeast calculator??

It's difficult to say exactly why you had a clovey first batch with WLP002, but in general, yeast stress is a likely culprit. It could be that too much time was spent in a growth phase due to underpitching. If you are not making a starter, you probably are better off pitching 2 vials as per MrMalty. Additionally, pay attention to controlling your temperature. I just did a beer with 1272 and I stayed at the low end of the temp range; pitched at 63F and let the temperature get to 67F. No off flavors.

 

I think you're fine to pitch one activator pack. I'm now in the habit of doing a starter regardless of the starting gravity, but I've done plenty of 1.060 beers that attenuated properly with just one vial of yeast. To me, it's preferable to follow the calculator but not absolutely necessary for a 1.050 beer. Just oxygenate/aerate properly and keep a consistent fermentation temp and you should be good.

 

1272 is a pretty hardy yeast, you will be fine with one pack. If you were talking about an English or Belgian strain I would consider it, or at least a 1L starter.

 

Do you have a growler? No need for a starter kit.

 

"I don't have the equipment to do starters." You know how to ferment wort. You're 90% there. That's all a starter is. You could use a sanitized 2 liter bottle. Beyond that all you need is a cap and a saucepan or pot to boil some wort. Cover the wort and let it cool. Pitch. Shake it every now and then, as oxygen is a GOOD thing in this step. Pitch it into your beer after 18 hours and no later than a week. It's an intimidating concept, but it's really just a quick brew without hops

Edit: And to get a suitable starter solution you just need 10g DME to 100 ml water. That should put you around 10.40

 

My preferred starter method is in a flask, since you can go right from stove top to ice bath without transferring vessel. That said, as the others mention, a growler works great. Use foil on the top, or a foam stopper so plenty of O2 gets in the wort. Swirl it often, and get it active.

I like making the starter 3 days before pitching, and the night before brewing tossing it in my fridge. This crashes the yeast out and lets me decant the oxidized shitty unhopped wort and just pitch good healthy yeast. 7 oz of DME in 2L of wort gets 1.040ish, and works just dandy.

 

Just want to add that when using a PET bottle you can loosen the cap and give the bottle a squeeze to purge the CO2.

And don't forget what the purpose of a starter really is. It's to buff up the cells with nutrients. A starter can also be used to increase cell count. I ask, "If you make a starter to increase cell count and put it in the fridge for a month do you still have a starter?". On the morning that I brew I always make a starter. I take the container that has the proper cell count, decant and add about a pint of non-aerated wort. I happen to have a pressure cooker so I use pre-made sterilized wort.

The only challenge to Mr Malty is that the stir plate setting is incorrect. I heard of this first when Beersmith 2 came out. I'm not sure who is correct, but after all these calculators are just like the IBU calculators. In no way perfect but just a tool to use.

 

One packet of yeast will ferment a 1.055 beer just fine from a numbers standpoint. But I'd pitch two vials/packets either way (and have before on a number of ales that were in that ballpark and didn't get the starter treatment). Just because it might finish out at the FG you're looking for doesn't mean the difference won't be noticeable in aroma/flavor. This is the number 1 (or 2, vs. temp control) culprit for off-flavors in homebrew in my opinion.

 

I would say the primary purpose of a starter is to increase cell count, in a way that also promotes healthy yeast that are ready to finish propagating (in the fermenter) and ferment the beer. If cell counts weren't important, all you'd need to do is smack a smack-pack (there's the nutrients), then pitch.

 

And you forgot I ask, "If you make a starter to increase cell count and put it in the fridge for a month do you still have a starter?". On the morning that I brew I always make a starter.

The main purpose would of course be dependent on what your doing at the moment. But I think that often people fail to look at both uses. It's not hard to put yeast into survival mode where they start to deplete their reserves. All that I was doing is to try and promote some thought on pitching healthy yeast.

 

Seriously. DME + growler = starter kit

 

This.

And yes, I do agree with Mr Malty. Most of us feel he tends to err on the side of high pitch rates, but it's generally better to have too much yeast than too little. Depending on the yeast, style, gravity, etc, you can often get by without making a starter, but as a general rule a malty-sized starter will lead to more succesful beers.

 

I don't have a stir plate, and I was looking to make a 9% doppelbock earlier this year. I followed the Mr. Malty advice and got a clean and clear fermentation with no off flavors, which I was definitely worried about, given the lager yeast strain I used. I would recommend erring on the side of "over"-pitching even against the conservative Mr. Malty calculator, as a commercial pitch rate would be around 10 million yeast cells per mL of wort. Expanding this to a 5-gallon batch of homebrew, you would be looking at 200 billion cells. Clearly, you are able to get great homebrew results with about 1/100th of this pitch rate. I am simply providing the commercial scale for an illustration of how hard it would be to truly overpitch.

 

Your post is confusing me.

Just to pick some numbers I used 1.085 > 1.015 for 9.19%. Mr Malty says that you need 578 billion cells. (1.085/5 gal/lager yeast).

As far as determining cell count I don't see where Mr. Malty is conservative. Most calculators agree on cell count needed.

But you seem to be saying that you were successful w/Mr Malty, it's best to overpitch but you can also underpitch @ 1/100th. Which would be 5.78 billion cells. Or in your case/suggestion 2 billion cells.


What am I missing?

 

i like this formula for calculating pitching rate:

from Charlie Bamforth-- 1million cells/mL of wort/degree plato

 

That's higher than Mr. Malty's ale pitch rate, which everyone 'knows' is too high. Kidding aside, I think the Mr. Malty numbers are a great guideline in most cases.

 

You're right. Totally confusing, because I went from my beer (9% ABV lager) to his beer (5% ABV ale) without providing any indication that I was changing reference frames.

My bad.

My statement about Mr. Malty being conservative was more in the case of homebrewing. It gives the recommended cell counts for a commercial pitch rate (as most pitch rate calculators do), which as I mentioned, and (I think?) you agree can be cut down significantly when brewing on the smaller scale. The 200 billion commercial vs. 2 billion cell count homebrewer pitch rate for a ~1.050 OG 5-gallon homebrew batch of ale demonstrates that, I believe. So I think we're on the same page, and if I had written a coherent post earlier, that would have been more clear.