Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Stir plate starter

On saturday I'll be brewing a 50 liter batch of Belgian witbier(13.2 gallons for those of you living in Burma, Liberia or USA). As I have Wyeast 3944 Belgian Wit in my yeastbank, I took some yeast from a slant to propagate. Normall I brew 20 l batches, and making a 2 liter starter for that is OK. For 50 l I would need a 5 l starter, which is a lot. So, to save some money on DME and also for the sake of experiemtation, I decided to make a 2 liter stir plate starter. I have been planning to build a stir plate, but for the time being I have to borrow a stir plate from my workplace. I also borrowed a few erlenmeyer flasks. Don't have those at home either. For the sake of comparison, I have a smal starter on the side without stirring. If I have time tomorrow, I'll do a cell count and compare the two. You'll notice that one flask has a bigger volume. That is because this one has a stronger magnet allowing bigger volumes to swirl without the stir bar going bananas. I'm really curious how many more cells I'll get from the stir plate starter! Will it be worth it?

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