Yeast Starter Size Concern

I plan on brewing an Imperial Black IPA this Sunday, which will have an OG of 1.085. I am fermenting it with Wyeast 1098 and BeerSmith is telling me that I need a 1.52 Liter starter. I'm concerned about that volume being too small because I usually make a minimum 2 liter starter for "big beers".

Any input on this concern would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers!

BeerSmith is simply giving you an optimal starter size based on the info you've given it. Consider this a "minimum," not an upper limit.

Rounding up to a 2 liter starter is perfectly reasonable.

Great topic. We just brewed a 10 gallon IPA and my concern is that I used a 2 liter starter with 1 package of Wyeast. According to Beersmith I needed a 3.85 liter starter to get the right amount of yeast cells. Moving forward can I just double the water and DME for my starter?

Currently I use 2 liters of water and 7oz of DME boil/cool/pitch 1 package of Wyeast and put it on a stir plate

You'll get only a tripling of yeast cells per pitch, under perfect conditions. A stir plate is pretty optimal.

You can get a better growth exponent by starting with the 2 liter, then once growth stops, repitch the slurry into a 4 liter starter. It's actually 3x the water and DME, but up to 9x the population of the original packet. Seems like a good investment.

brewfun said:

You'll get only a tripling of yeast cells per pitch, under perfect conditions. A stir plate is pretty optimal.

You can get a better growth exponent by starting with the 2 liter, then once growth stops, repitch the slurry into a 4 liter starter. It's actually 3x the water and DME, but up to 9x the population of the original packet. Seems like a good investment.

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Brewfun, Thanks for the reply. Just so I understand correctly, as 9X has perked my attention   I would do the normal 2 liter starter let run it's course (1-2 days) then let it settle pour off the excess wort. Do a double size starter but instead of using another package of yeast I would pitch the slurry from the original starter and put that on the stir plate? I assume the final starter would growth out in about the same amount of time? Thanks again.

Kevcor said:

I assume the final starter would growth out in about the same amount of time? Thanks again.

Click to expand...

Aye!

Starter 1 = 3x
Starter 2 = 3x

3x3=9x

Keep in mind that this is the maximum "healthy" propagation potential. Too much wort and the daughter cells aren't as healthy. Not enough and the yeast will begin fermentation before creating 3x the population. The condition is pH, when it's low enough, the yeast concentrates on fermentation. The pH of the starter is one way to measure how close the yeast is to stopping growth and converting to fermentation.

The Mr Malty yeast calculator is excellent at giving you the correct starter size for the amount of yeast you have.