Starter needed for a 1.065 OG?

Yep, make a starter.

 

I personally follow the vendor’s recommendations when it comes to making a starter or not. Many BAs follow the recommendations of Mr. Malty which is a very conservative estimator.

So Wyeast states:

“6. Do I need to make a starter for an Activator?

No. The Activator is designed to deliver professional pitch rates (6 million cells/ ml.) when directly added to 5 gallons of wort. ( <1.060 at 70 degrees). However, if a package is slow to swell, suspected of being mishandled, or if the date is approaching the six month shelf life it is a good idea to build the culture up with a starter. High gravity or low temperature fermentations require higher pitch rates. This can be achieved with inoculating with additional packages or making a starter.”

So I personally would make a starter for this IPA since the OG exceeds 1.060.

You could probably ‘get away’ with just pitching the Activator pack but I personally would make a starter for this beer.

Good luck with your IPA.

Cheers!

 

The vendors advice, IMO- is a bit off. I make a starter for anything over 1.050....and dependent upon yeast strain, even lower. If you try to pitch 1968 into a 1.060 beer it is not going to give you desired results. Other more attenuative, powdery strains may allow some abuse....but I'd make a starter for sure. Why put in all the effort for sub-par results?

 

When you say "powdery" do you mean dry yeast? Cause in that case not making a starter isn't "abuse" it just makes "cents" to buy an extra packet as your OG rises given how dirt cheap they are.

And, yeah, 1.060 is perhaps pushing the envelope to not make a starter with liquid strains, but that's why I think Wyeast's reccomendation is <1.060.

 

Make a starter, follow this guy advise

 

do a starter for everything, even if its a small beer. helps liven up the yeast, also with some nutrient you get them all healthy and read to pounce on the sugars. Pitch at high kruesen and your lag time will be a couple hours

 

No, by powdery I mean low flocculation or the ability for the yeast to stay in suspension, not dry yeast. In general I find that those yeasts that drop out or floc quickly benefit more from a starter than those that that don't.

 

Yes, that would be the amount of starter wort. For water, figure just a hair over 2.9 liters, because you only need to boil it for a few minutes to sanitize... Let's call it 3 quarts. (I hate metric.) For DME... you want an OG of somewhere between 1.030 and 1.040. Let's say 1.040. Since DME contributes about 44 points per pound per gallon, you want 40/44 pounds per gallon, or 0.91 pounds of DME per gallon. Since 3 quarts is 3/4 of a gallon, multiply the 0.91 times 3/4 to get .6835 lbs of DME.

But... I'm guessing that original 2.9 liter recommendation was based on a 'simple starter.' You can make a smaller starter (probably well under 2.0 liters) and still get the same number of cells if you do an 'intermittent shaking' starter, which just means giving it a good swirl several times a day. Mr. Malty has a dropdown box where you can select 'intermittent shaking'. Of course, you would need to also reduce the DME proportionally to maintain the same OG for the starter wort.

 

Well it seems that once again I'm swimming against the tide.

Starters serve two purposes. Grow cell count and/or beef up the cells. Wyeast packets are nice in that you can within a sterile environment, you can feed the yeast.

Now IIRC the starter inside these packets won't grow cell count. Or at least not as a typical starter will do. But at any rate you should be able to take the package date and from the viability get a cell count. Then, if your spitting nickels just buy the proper number of packets.

I say this because I do put credence in the inoculation rate of the starter. 2.9L of starter even with fresh yeast will not grow the cell count that you'll expect. You'll either need a stir plate or to do a few steps. Or play it safe and get a few packets.

 

This would be slightly more than doubling the cell count. Why do you think a 2.9L simple starter would not work?

 

In some ways a 2.9L starter will work, but according to the experts it not the best thing for yeast health. This is from a post in homebrewtalk

"The most important thing to know about starter size is that the inoculation rate affects the rate of growth. In other words, the "pitching rate" of your starter has a big effect on the amount of new yeast cells you will see from any propagation. It is not the volume of the starter that is important, but how many cells you add in relation to that volume. Too high an inoculation rate, and you get very little growth. If you use too low an inoculation rate, then you are not really making a starter, you are fermenting beer. Just as the pitching rate affects growth in a batch of beer, which is important to beer flavor; it also affects growth in a starter, except in the case of a starter you are not concerned about flavor, you are concerned about the health of the yeast and maximizing your growth rate.
Ideally, you want to grow your yeast in a large enough volume of wort to ensure optimal yeast health and to get a decent amount of growth for your trouble."
C.White and J.Zainasheff, "Yeast: The Practical Guide to Beer Fermentation", 2010

According to what I read in Chris White's "Yeast" book, an inoculation rate of 50 - 100 million cells/ml of wort appears to be the 'sweet spot' for maximizing cell growth and health in a starter.
That said; it does not mean that if you pitch outside that range you've hurt your yeast. Perhaps I should word the tool tip differently, like "50 - 100 million cells/ml is the optimal range to maximize yeast growth", or something along those lines.

Basically in my post I'm trying to point out that the Activator packets are starters. If someone is new and has angst about making a starter buying multiple packets is an option. You could use http://www.yeastcalc.com/ to figure out how many. Just set the batch size, OG, production date and change the "Initial Cell Count" in multiples of 100 for the number of packets.

 

Okay, but now you're talking about yeast health. You had said that a 2.9L starter will not grow the cell count you're expecting. I believe it will. If you look at the data in "Yeast", you'll see that you would have to go much bigger than 2.9L before cell growth peaks and becomes 'making beer' rather than efficiently increasing cell counts. And my experience with starters before I owned a stirplate leads me to a similar conclusion. I have not actually counted cells in a lab, but I think I can eyeball the size of a yeast cake pretty well.

Regarding yeast health, I would just note that 50-100M/ml is one opinion about optimal starter pitch rate (which I can't find in "yeast"...if you could cite a page number, I'd appreciate it). OP's starter would be innoculating at about 33M/ml. I have not read anything that says that's too low for good yeast health. But I would be interested if you could point me to something. TIA.

 

Pardon me while I do some “ciphering”.

So, Wyeast states that an Activator pack has 100 billion yeast cells.

“According to what I read in Chris White's "Yeast" book, an inoculation rate of 50 - 100 million cells/ml of wort appears to be the 'sweet spot' for maximizing cell growth and health in a starter.”

Assuming that the Activator pack has the stated amount of 100 billion yeast cells then to obtain an inoculation rate of 100 million cells/ml, a 1 liter starter would be appropriate:

100,000 million yeast cells/1000 ml = 100 million cells/ml.

Below is the starter recipe provided on the Wyeast web site. Lo and behold, Wyeast recommends a starter volume of 1 liter!

“Starter Recipe:

The optimal media for cell growth and health require using a malt based media (DME) fortified with nutrients. Gravity should be kept near 1.040 and cultures should be grown at 70°F.

Recipe 0.5 cup DME (100g, 3.5oz) ½ tsp Wyeast Nutrient 1qt.(1L) H2OMix DME, nutrient, and water. Boil 20 minutes to sterilize. Pour into a sanitized flask or jar with loose lid or foil. Allow to cool to 70°F. Shake well and add yeast culture.”

http://www.wyeastlab.com/hb_makingastarter.cfm

If you shoot for an inoculation rate of 50 million cells/ml than a starter volume of 2 liters would get you there:

100,000 million cells/2000 ml = 50 million cells/ml

I personally make 1.5 liter starters so my personal inoculation rate is 75 million cells/ml.

Cheers!

 

Wait... so you make 1.5L starters for every batch, regardless of gravity and yeast age? That would certainly be better than no starter, but would be underpitching beyond some gravity (regardless of whatever you accept to be the optimal pitch rate).

 

In my first sentence in my first post of this thread: “I personally follow the vendor’s recommendations when it comes to making a starter or not. Many BAs follow the recommendations of Mr. Malty which is a very conservative estimator.”

I have never read on either the Wyeast or White Labs websites the need to make other than a 1 liter starter (I do ‘cheat’ a bit here by making a 1.5 liter starter).

To repeat what I stated above, I am of the opinion that Mr. Malty is a very conservative estimator.

So, I personally make 1.5L starters for every batch, regardless of gravity and yeast age based upon the above reasons. Every batch of beer that I make this way turns out great!

To demonstrate beyond a shadow of a doubt that I am a Mr. Malty heretic let me tell you a story. I brewed a Wit last week. It had an OG of 1.046. I had a fresh pack (less than 2 week old) of Wyeast 3944. I just pitched that pack (in an activated state); I did not make a starter. And guess what? That beer will turn out great.

Yup, I am a ‘bad’ boy!

Cheers!

 

Those sites oversimplify starter instructions (implying 'one size fits all' starters), with an aim toward helping beginners make their first batch(es), IMO. But if you believe the White Labs site just because it's the manufacturer, then I would urge you to read what Chris White (the owner of White Labs and probably the author of what you're reading on the site) has to say about the matter in 'Yeast'. Or even email him.