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I am looking for help in understanding exactly what the term 'slurry' means. I have brewed several batches of partial mash beer successfully, and for the last batch used one smackpack & a small amount recovered yeast to make my first starter, which fermented the wort vigorously. Now I'd like to save the cost of a smackpack (and feel like I'm taking over a little bit more of the process) by using only recovered yeast in a starter for my next batch (same kind of strong IPA, so the yeast should be suited to the task).
My problem is that in reading brewing books such as Palmer and trying to use the yeast starter calculator on here, all the calculations & principles (declining vigor over time, cells/ml, etc) are confounded by my lack of understanding of what slurry is. I've harvested yeast from both the primary & secondary yeast cakes (didn't feel I got enough from the primary) and after washing it have ended up with a 1/4-inch layer of yeast in the bottom of a quart jar, covered with clear beery liquid. The yeast calculator starts with a default of 1 liter of slurry -- I assume that's not expecting the bottom yeast layer to amount to that much, so it must mean the yeast layer swirled up in the liquid. But since the amount of liquid in the jar depends on how much of it I discarded after the yeast settled, it doesn't make sense to me that 'slurry' can have an assumed standard yeast density. I could swirl up that amount of yeast in a half-liter of liquid, or in 2 liters of liquid -- both would be slurries, but would have greatly different densities.
Sorry for the belabored explanation of my question, but hopefully someone will see my problem and clue me in! I want to use enough, but not too much, yeast for my starter and don't see how to properly use the calculator.
Thanks for any advice--
Matt
My problem is that in reading brewing books such as Palmer and trying to use the yeast starter calculator on here, all the calculations & principles (declining vigor over time, cells/ml, etc) are confounded by my lack of understanding of what slurry is. I've harvested yeast from both the primary & secondary yeast cakes (didn't feel I got enough from the primary) and after washing it have ended up with a 1/4-inch layer of yeast in the bottom of a quart jar, covered with clear beery liquid. The yeast calculator starts with a default of 1 liter of slurry -- I assume that's not expecting the bottom yeast layer to amount to that much, so it must mean the yeast layer swirled up in the liquid. But since the amount of liquid in the jar depends on how much of it I discarded after the yeast settled, it doesn't make sense to me that 'slurry' can have an assumed standard yeast density. I could swirl up that amount of yeast in a half-liter of liquid, or in 2 liters of liquid -- both would be slurries, but would have greatly different densities.
Sorry for the belabored explanation of my question, but hopefully someone will see my problem and clue me in! I want to use enough, but not too much, yeast for my starter and don't see how to properly use the calculator.
Thanks for any advice--
Matt