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Yeast Cells Needed discrepancy

hallibee

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Hi everyone. New to the forum, been brewing for a year & using Beersmith 2 software for about three months. Love it, but have a starter calc question.

I'm making a starter for a Bavarian Hefeweizen using Wyeast 3068. I've always used the Yeast Starter tab as my point of reference on determining starter size, but today (out of curiosity) I also used the Yeast Starter tool to compare the two. To my surprise they were quite a bit off. The Yeast Starter tab suggested that ~242 billion cells were needed, but the Yeast Starter tool suggested only ~180 billion cells were needed (which is consistent w/ Mr. Malty). How could the two numbers in Beersmith be so off?

The only hint of an explanation I could find was in the Help document which states that the 'Yeast Cells Needed' field in the Yeast Starter tab is based on, "the type of recipe, batch size and pitch rate setting...". Could it be that the Starter tab is more accurate than the starter tool b/c it knows the ingredients in my recipe vs. the tool which does not? Or is the Starter tab using different assumptions than the default settings in the tool?

If I use a stir plate, the starter size difference is negligible. But if I don't, the difference is almost double (1.5 qt. vs 2.8 qt.).

What am I missing?

OG 1.050
Partial mash Hefe
Volume into fermenter 5.25G
Yeast production date: 8.29.11

Thanks!

Dave
 
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