I harvested the yeast from an Oktoberfest brewed in May, bottled a couple weeks ago. After the two washing cycles, I have one small mason jar with about a 1/4 inch of yeast on the bottom.
1.) Does this sound normal from a 10gallon batch?
2.) I want to use this for a schwartzbier, but may not be brewing for another month or so. How soon should I make the starter?
3.) With a harvested yeast, how do I know if I have enough for the brew it’s being used for?
[quote=“stompwampa”]I harvested the yeast from an Oktoberfest brewed in May, bottled a couple weeks ago. After the two washing cycles, I have one small mason jar with about a 1/4 inch of yeast on the bottom.
1.) Does this sound normal from a 10gallon batch?
It is a small amount. Probably decanted some yeast that was in suspension during your rinsing.
2.) I want to use this for a schwartzbier, but may not be brewing for another month or so. How soon should I make the starter?
http://yeastcalc.com/ Use Yeastcalc to determine viability at least two weeks before you brew. Use the fermenatation date as production date. If you are using the intermittent shaking method allow at least three days for each step. One of the three days is cold crashing to decant wort after each step. http://www.mrmalty.com/yeast-tools.php MrMalty will be of use also.3.) With a harvested yeast, how do I know if I have enough for the brew it’s being used for?
Roughly mark your mason jar in milliliters. Use a measuring cup marked in metric and another jar to do this. Estimate 100 billion cells possible per ml. This will give you mls’ of your yeast to plug into Yeastcalc.
[/quote]
