Have I grown enough yeast?

[philistine]

Hey Dudes,

This may seem like a dumb question - but does this look like enough yeast to brew a lager?
Its wyeast 2308 - munich lager and Im gonna be pitching it into 21 litres of 1.051 wort.
The reason I feel unconfident is that initially the package I bought was close to expiry (it was 5 months old). So I did a 2 litre starter on a stirplate, let it ferment for 48 hours, then cold crashed.
After 2-3 days in the fridge, the resulting yeast cake didnt look that great, it was half brown half white. I had planned on stepping it up, but given that it didnt look that all that well populated, I just decanted and added another 2 litres of ~1.040 wort. Stir plate for 48 hours, cold crash for 72 and here it is. This time the yeast cake is a little thicker and 100% white which Im happy about, but Im still thinking its not enough and contemplating another round... the problem is, I dont have a big enough flask....
I do have various vessels to do a bigger starter, but unfortunaelt none of them suit the stir plate due to having convex bottoms (the stir bar wont sit in the middle and just doesnt work)

Whaddyas reckon?
(Its a 2L flask btw)

:EDIT: added a 2nd pic with a ciggy lighter for scale

 

[philistine]

sorry, I can never get the pics right - they always turn out sideways or something and I have no idea how to edit... (any help in this department would be also be appreciated!)

 

[Rocker1986]

According to the Troester stir plate setting on Yeastcalc, you should have more than enough from those two 2L starters. Even the Zainesheff setting comes out ahead even though it's a lesser amount. I know it doesn't look like a shitload of yeast but in my experience it works perfectly fine. I usually make 3.5/4L starters for lagers and the cake on the bottom isn't much bigger than that really (although it is spread out more being a bigger diameter bottom)

 

[danestead]

Looking at your picture looks roughly right to me. If it's healthy, there will definitely be enough yeast there to ferment beer.

If I had access to a real computer I'd be able to put it through a yeast calculator for you . It's proving difficult on my phone.

 

[philistine]

sweet!
Yeah, I used mr. malty to work it out and sorta did a work around to account for my 2lt flask.

first step was to work out the total pitch rate and starter size - which was 390 billion cells from about 6 litres of starter.
from that, I scaled down the batch volume until the starter size was around 2lt and used the yeast manufacture date for calculation, which worked out to about 160 bill cells - so that was my first starter

then, I scaled it up to the full 21lt batch size and unchecked the 'calculate viability from date' and changed the viability to 160 bill cells (160% viability) - which worked out to a second 2lt starter.

..... hope that makes sense...?

anyway, thanks again for the vote of confidence - tonight marks the beginning of 3 consecutive lagers and the next 3-4 months of brewing! Starting with a helles, then gonna pitch a vienna lager onto that once its done, then a dunkel onto that when thats done....

WINTER IS COMING

 

[danestead]

Ditch Mr malty mate. Use yeastcalc as rockerdid, it is far more user friendly and allows stepped starters. If you use the zainesheff stir plate setting , that is the same as the stir plate setting on Mr malty (Jamil Zainesheff is Mr Malty ). Happy days!

 

[philistine]

cheers - I didnt even know yeast calc existed, so much easier!
It spits out roughly the same figures I was working with too