[norcaljp]

I'm brewing up a double IPA this Sunday that should be somewhere in the range of 1.082.

I went with the shaken not stirred method for my last batch and it produced a fine beer, but I also introduced too many other variables to decide what contribution the shaken not stirred procedure may have given.

My yeast is 4 months old Vermont Ale from the Yeast bay that I harvested from a stirred starter. Given the age of the yeast and the higher gravity of this beer, I decided to 'step' my 1L shaken not stirred starter. Not really stepping so much as just doing the process twice. The 1st batch I started today and will cold crash tomorrow evening to ensure I have a nice healthy amount of yeast. Then on Sunday morning when I brew, I'll repeat the procedure with the decanted yeast cake from today's starter, and pitch that at high krausen sometime Sunday evening.

Curious about other's thoughts are on this procedure under these circumstances.

[reverseapachemaster]

As long as the older yeast were successfully revived and you are ultimately pitching a healthy volume of yeast then I don't see a problem. I have used much older yeast without problem with a starter.

[emcfarden]

I just finished brewing a 1.07 IPA this last Sunday. I did a 32oz starter with WL001 (new pack) and 0.5 cups of DME. Let it sit out for about 36 hrs shaking it up when I thought about it. Cold crashed and decanted about 80% of the liquid on brew day and pitched. I saw really good bubbling in my blow off about 10hrs later and its going strong still.

If I do a higher gravity beer than that I would probably double the size of the starter, and if I had older yeast I would probably decant and perform another "step" depending on how much yeast slurry I need. I use a really good yeast starter calculator that takes everything into account, you may try it out if you're not already.

http://www.brewersfriend.com/yeast-pitch-rate-and-starter-calculator/

It also has links to some other resources as well.