Mr. Malty reckons on 1 litre starter for 11 litre batch. Really?

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welly2

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Just had a look at the Mr. Malty pitching rate calculator for a brew I'm going to cook up this weekend. I'm making an IPA with 3.20kg of 2 row pale ale malt, 350g of Special B in an 11L batch. Estimated OG is coming in at 1.068 and estimated ABV is 6.5%. Using White Labs WLP007 Dry English Ale yeast.

Mr. Malty is reckoning on 1L of yeast starter. That seems a lot of starter for an 11L batch. Almost 10% of the overall beer! What do you guys reckon?
 
How old is the yeast? Otherwise flying blind with our advice.
 
Just got it today so 2 days being shipped here plus however long on the store shelf/warehouse. I'll have a look on the vial when I get home.
 
I find beersmiths yeast calculations way off, my beers improved alot after starting to use mr.malty.

Black n Tan is on to it with how old the yeast is i'd say. If your making a starter anyway it's no harder to make a litre then it is to make half a litre
 
My main concern is sticking a litre of dme (and yeast) into 11 litres of delicious wort might dilute it.
 
Sounds fine to me if the yeast is healthy. Make some wort starters then add when active and never worry again.
 
Whenever I do starters I let it settle and decant as much of the beer off the top as I can... so for a 1L starter I'd probably only pitch 300-400 ml at a guess
 
Cheers guys, something to think about. I'm going to be brewing on Saturday - is it too late to make a yeast starter or am I still good?
 
Not too late at all. I prefer to pitch just the yeast but at less than 10% of volume I think you will be fine pitch the lot. Otherwise get it on tonight and then cold crash tomorrow night and just pitch the yeast. A starter less than 1L can leave the yeast is worse health than they started, so if you are going to do a starter best to think of 1L or more, otherwise just pitch the pack.
 
whitegoose said:
Whenever I do starters I let it settle and decant as much of the beer off the top as I can... so for a 1L starter I'd probably only pitch 300-400 ml at a guess
Same. If I was going to pitch an active starter I would use some of the wort from the actual batch, rather than diluting it with unhopped wort.

But since I harvest yeast from my starters it's unlikely I'll make them from anything other than DME and water, so the crash and decant method will continue.
 
Rocker1986 said:
Same. If I was going to pitch an active starter I would use some of the wort from the actual batch, rather than diluting it with unhopped wort.
It is usually a mater of timing: if you have the wort then best to pitch ASAP rather than making a starter from the same wort and waiting to pitch. If you are concerned about hops, why not just add more hops to the wort to compensate i.e. 10% starter add 10% more hops? But if time is not an issue, I am on the same page and prefer to pitch just the yeast.
 
Yeah, fair points. I hadn't really though of it like that. I no-chill my batches so I suppose time isn't really an issue for me personally. I can ferment them whenever, so when I decide to begin fermenting one I make the starter a few days beforehand so I can crash and decant it.

The other problem in my case would be increasing the batch size too large for the FV. They're already 25 litres as it is. I could get around it by making the batch smaller to account for the size of the starter as well as increasing hops to account for dilution, but then I wouldn't fill my cube fully either.

I think I'll just stick with what I've been doing. :lol: It works well enough.
 

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