First Smack At A Liquid Yeast

[Dazza_devil]

Evenin Brewers,
I took my Wyeast 3638 out of the fridge last night and smacked my first pack this mornin and it's all lookin good. The pack, with a manufacture date of 28 Dec. '09, swelled well within two hours and I pitched it into a 1 litre starter. Came back from shopping a couple of hours later to find a krausen forming already, amazing. Some credit has to go to Ross at CraftBrewer here, the quality of his yeast and being able to ship it from Queensland to Tassie in the middle of a heat wave in obvious great condition. I ordered it express with two ice gel packs to help keep it cool in transit.
His vacuum sealer that he uses for cracked grain bags might not be much chop but the yeast I have to say is lookin somethin else.

I plan to step it up to a 3 litre starter and ferment it out. Hopefully will have enough slurry, after I chill and decant the beer off the top, to start my 23 litre Dunkelweizen @ 1.048 and have enough left over to make another couple of starters out of. What do ya's think? If I fill a stubby or two will there be enough to start my brew? I read that slightly underpitching can be an advantage with this particular style and yeast. I plan to give the starter I use for the brew a feed of the wort a couple of hours before I pitch it and ferment around 19 degrees C.

Cheers.

 

[chadjaja]

I smack a pack, add it to 1L of starter and sit it on my stir plate to ferment out. Then I split it up between 5 small pet soda bottles. When I want to use the yeast I simply take out a bottle of yeast, let it warm up and decant most of the beer on top and add it to another 1L starter which gets pitched in my brew. Just takes a bit of planing a few days before brew day.

 

[Pete2501]

I smack a pack, add it to 1L of starter and sit it on my stir plate to ferment out. Then I split it up between 5 small pet soda bottles. When I want to use the yeast I simply take out a bottle of yeast, let it warm up and decant most of the beer on top and add it to another 1L starter which gets pitched in my brew. Just takes a bit of planing a few days before brew day.

Nice idea.

 

[newguy]

Your plan will work but you don't need to leave much yeast behind to start another starter. I used to do this all the time with ~ 50ml of slurry and had no issues. I switched to pitching directly onto the yeast cake for batch 2 & 3 mainly because it's easier than messing around with saving yeast in a bottle. Only drawback is that I sometimes have 3 batches of very similar beer around.

 

[Screwtop]

Make a Hefeweizen, sure is the weather for it, then make your Dunkel and pitch it on to the slurry, remove 200ml of the slurry first to use to build up some splits (they will be 2nd gen).

Whatever you do, if you have a stirplate don't aerate after krausen, this will oxidise your starter.

Screwy

 

[brando]

I smack a pack, add it to 1L of starter and sit it on my stir plate to ferment out. Then I split it up between 5 small pet soda bottles. When I want to use the yeast I simply take out a bottle of yeast, let it warm up and decant most of the beer on top and add it to another 1L starter which gets pitched in my brew. Just takes a bit of planing a few days before brew day.

This is pretty much the same as I do, but I add smack pack to a 1.5L starter and then step that up to 2.5L before splitting into 5 bottles after it has fermented out. I guess I just end up with more yeast in each of the 5 bottles this way (and perhaps is not necessary).

 

[donburke]

careful with these hef yeasts,

last week i decided to brew a fresh wort hef, using hef (iv) yeast,

the whitelabs vials were six month out of date, so i decided to use 2 into a 3 litres starter,

this is where it all started to go pear shaped, climbed straight out of the fermenter within about 14 hours, and didnt stop foaming at the mouth for another 48 hours

your fresh pack, with nutrient starter, into 1 litre starter, then into 3 litre starter, = heaps of yeast

dude, i'd say you have double to quadruple the number of cells you need, considering the original smack pack was probably enough to innoculate the batch

and i'll say it again, CAREFUL and be prepared to use a blow off tube, you might need one

 

[chadjaja]

Funny you say that, my wheat using 1010 foamed out of the airlock on Sunday too for the first time ever. I normally cold crash my yeast, decant and pitch the yeast slurry but this time I pitched at high krausen and the sucker went off alright!

 

[Dazza_devil]

Thanks for all the advise, really has me thinkin, and readin.

So a Mr Malty recommendation of a 2.3 litre simple starter might be overpitching with this yeast you reckon? Perhaps the 1.3 litres recommended for an intermittently shaken starter would be more suitable? I'm not using a stir plate, just giving it a swirl now and then. I'll have a fair amount of headspace if I pitch into 23 litres in my 30 litre fermenter.

I reckon if I can get 3 or 4 brews out of an Activator Pack I'm doing fairly well financially and it wouldn't bother me to reinvest. I doubt if I would get around to brewing any more than 3 or 4 beers a year with this yeast anyway. I brew 1 or 2 batches a month at the moment and like a fair amount of variety in my beers. That said the starter smells delightful so you never know.

I didn't really want to make another starter from this starter to get my brew going so it's just a matter of how much will be left from my 3 litre starter to divvy up into stubbies for future brews.
I was thinking it may be best to swirl the finished starter then fill a couple of stubbies before chilling it to 1.5 degrees C. Settle it out and then decant the beer off the top before a final feeding of the wort just prior to pitching.

 

[Dazza_devil]

and i'll say it again, CAREFUL and be prepared to use a blow off tube, you might need one

Point taken, she's hit the roof in no time flat. I'm half expecting it to make it up the hallway through the night. Wish I had of rigged up a blow off tube as you suggested. I'll know for next time but it's looking like a mess to clean up in the morning.

I was thinking it may be best to swirl the finished starter then fill a couple of stubbies before chilling it to 1.5 degrees C.

This didn't really work that well.
I filled three stubbies but only got a bit under 1 cm of slurry in the bottoms of each, they're filled to the neck with starter beer, uncarbonated. I guess there's enough to start a brew in each though.