My situation:
I'm planning a starter for a 5-gallon 1.054 OG lager. Simple enough, except my yeast vial's a little old. Plugging the production date into the Mr Malty calculator drops the viability down to 48%.
If that's right, I've got about 50 billion cells in my old WL vial... and I need about 400 billion to pitch into my lager.
I slide the "growth factor" slider on the bottom of the calculator all the way to the right (fewer yeast packs) and it still calls for 2 vials of yeast in a 3.5 L starter
So, how big does my starter really need to be if I only want to use the 1 vial?
Thoughts?
