Yeast starter, basic help

There are calculators that take all that into consideration:

http://www.mrmalty.com/calc/calc.html

 

I use the mini chapter at the back of Brewing Classic Styles as my starter guide. Use a yeast calculator to figure out how many cells/what size starter you need. Then use 100g of DME per liter of finished starter to get a gravity of about 1.040. I used plastic juice/water containers and shake my starters manually and my results so far seem to be pretty good. Don't forget to add some yeast nutrients! Finally, consider overbuilding your starter by about 100 billion cells, that way you can save up the extra for another batch and get (practically) free yeast.

 

Here are two excellent articles on the subject. Yes, you can pitch too much . . . and if you dig around you'll find conflicting pitch rates, but that's poor of the enjoyment of homebrewing. Spend some time with the good calculators (Brewcipher, Brewers Friend, yeastcalculator.com) and get a feel for how all this works. If you're serious you'll end up with stir-plate/flask . . . yeast nutrient and oxygen are also your friends. Good luck.

 

Short answer is: Yes you can over pitch and be okay; unless you WAY over do it you don't have too much to worry about.

It is considerd to be worse by most to under pitch than to over pitch in MOST cases.

Depending on style.

For example- I under pitch yeast in my Belgians to stress the yeast and get some extra flavors/funk out of it. It basically throws off more phenols and diacetyl.

Typically over pitching can thin out the beer and make it too "clean" while under pitching will throw some off flavors out that are not desirable in MOST beer styles.

Good advice given by others to play around with the calculators and get a feel for things.

For most styles there is a sweet spot as far as yeast cell count is concerned and you should really focus on hitting that sweet spot.

Proper pitching rates and temperature control make a BIG difference in the final flavor of your brews.

 

“Typically over pitching can thin out the beer and make it too "clean" while under pitching will throw some off flavors out that are not desirable in MOST beer styles.”

A BIG +1 to that statement! I have seen many posts on BA which intimate that overpitching is not an ‘issue’ but there is indeed a potential consequence to overpitching.

Conversely there can indeed be issues wrt underpitching but as was stated there are some beer styles where underpitching is a ‘benefit’.

Cheers!

 

I re read my post and I accidentally wrote "diacetyl" when I meant esters. Had to come back and correct that more esters and phenols are created when stressing/under pitching yeast..

Esters give off some fruity clove like goodness and phenols are peppery; good combo flavors in Belgians in my opinion.

Yesterday was a long day...

 

I do the same or similar for Belgians. My current batch is 6.8% abv fermented with Ardennes. 30% underpitch with a starter. No oxygen. I use some O2 with bigger Belgians, but much less than a big American Stout. Fermented cool at 64 for three days then hit it with a heat belt using a timer set to go on and off at various intervals.

The result is good. FG is 1.007. It has clove and some kind of fruity ester in good balance with a hard to describe Belgian yeast note found in many Belgian yeasts. Some might call it Belgian funk.

When I have pitched the "proper" amount of yeast and used the "proper" amount of O2 with a Belgian, the results were too clean.

 

The clove aroma is also a phenol.

 

I have had the same results with the recommended pitch rate, and using O2 on British ales. Too clean, lacking in character.