Got a brew day coming up on Friday so I am getting my yeast ready. Everywhere I have checked including mr. malty it suggesting a two liter starter for a lager but I only have a 1000ml flask.
I figure I am still increasing the cell count so a smaller starter won’t hurt, but am I sabotaging my wonderful brew day? Am I doomed for a high FG?
I am planning a medium gravity lighter body hoppy lager around the 1.05 – 1.06; should I just dumb the recipe down to a session lager?
Any starter is better than no starter. You can make multiple stages by letting the yeast go, decant and pour more wort in to repeat the process. You can grow more yeast with the limited volume that way but it will take more time and effort.
I don’t always meet Mr Malty’s pitching recommendations, it’s just something to shoot for.
Any apple juice glass bottles at the store? Maybe a $4 jug of wine?
Or just the plastic container from a gallon of milk (properly cleaned and sanitized of course).
+1 to the bottle of apple juice, or some Carlo Rossi Sangria, the nice thing about the Carlo Rossi bottles is they are 4 liters, so just over a gallon. They work great, only thing you can’t do is dump hot wort in one, or hot anything, they are not boroscilicate glass obviously, and will break immediately.
If it were me I would just pitch the whole starter and go with it. But if you’re really worried about it, brew a half batch with the starter and pick up the malt to make up the half batch, brew it again in 3 weeks and dump it on the yeast of the half batch. And you’ll have 7.5 gallons of beer!
When I brew lagers I start with a 2.5 gallon batch of ~1.040 beer, then dump 5 gallons on the resulting yeast cake, and then split it on a 10 gallon batch.
I hate making a large starter just to decant most of it for a 5 gallon batch.
+1 to the Carlo Rossi gal jug. They are great to have around and its one hell of a cheap buzz. You can pick them up for under $10 and can easily be found at the supermarket or Walmart.
I “force” my girlfriend to drink these to keep the jugs. I’ve got about 10 of them now! 
Perfect for starters and also yeast storage.
1+ I love to use milk jugs for starters. Rinse, clean & sanitize after the milk. Single use for 2L starters then on the recycle bin as usual. No clean up. I’ve had people say not to use them because they are O2 permeable…but isn’t that the point with starters?
