[a10t2]

Dry yeast has come a long way, true.  BUT, I know that if I was at my LHBS and knew I could buy a "double" smack pack for $10 that would pitch the appropriate amount per Mr. Malty, I would.  And why couldn't WL just make a "double vial".  Still seems strange to me knowing that there are a lot of experienced homebrewers out here now.

I suspect (without any evidence) that since White Labs and Wyeast are competing against one another in a high-volume, low-margin market, they're each wary of increasing prices and losing business to the other.

Note that when Wyeast came out with the Activator packs, White Labs increased the cell counts in the vials (and the price, IIRC) almost immediately.

[davidgzach]

That makes sense.

[narvin]

Back to the price. My expert recoments to pitch 1 liter per one BBL of 1050 lager.
This translates to 5 liters of slurry that I need to buy. With shipping it is almost $500.

So if you do a little math you can find out that is expert recommendation for 5 gal or 10 gal batches.

according to that pitching rate you need 156.25 ml for a 5 gallon batch of 1.050 lager. That's not a lot more than 2 smack packs or vials if you call the vial approx .5 actual yeast. If that measure is for the whole volume than that means a little over one pack or vial to 5 gallons. interesting! unless it's not a linear relationship.

Mr. Malty estimates that a medium density slurry of this size would be close to 400 billion cells, which seems like a more appropriate lager pitching rate for 5 gallons.  Given that a White Labs vial is 35 ml, this seems about right.

[morticaixavier]

Back to the price. My expert recoments to pitch 1 liter per one BBL of 1050 lager.
This translates to 5 liters of slurry that I need to buy. With shipping it is almost $500.

So if you do a little math you can find out that is expert recommendation for 5 gal or 10 gal batches.

according to that pitching rate you need 156.25 ml for a 5 gallon batch of 1.050 lager. That's not a lot more than 2 smack packs or vials if you call the vial approx .5 actual yeast. If that measure is for the whole volume than that means a little over one pack or vial to 5 gallons. interesting! unless it's not a linear relationship.

Mr. Malty estimates that a medium density slurry of this size would be close to 400 billion cells, which seems like a more appropriate lager pitching rate for 5 gallons.  Given that a White Labs vial is 35 ml, this seems about right.

Why did I think that a vial was 125 ml?

[a10t2]

Why did I think that a vial was 125 ml?

The Wyeast activator packs are 125 mL.

[morticaixavier]

Why did I think that a vial was 125 ml?

The Wyeast activator packs are 125 mL.

ahh gotcha. but that is pretty thin slurry so I guess my calculations above are full of s***t. more like 4 vials or packs to 5 gallons. which is pretty close to what mr malty would indicate.

[chaz]

I was discussing pitching rates and their website's pitching calculator with a Wyeast rep once and they straight up said to use Mr Malty instead for best results.

[davidgzach]

I was discussing pitching rates and their website's pitching calculator with a Wyeast rep once and they straight up said to use Mr Malty instead for best results.

That is too funny. 

[beersk]

I was discussing pitching rates and their website's pitching calculator with a Wyeast rep once and they straight up said to use Mr Malty instead for best results.

Yeah, that's kinda weird.  Why would they even have the pitching rate calculator on their site in that case...

[blatz]

Yeah, that's kinda weird.  Why would they even have the pitching rate calculator on their site in that case...

well, they do also have 'pitchable' on their packaging 

[davidgzach]

Yeah, that's kinda weird.  Why would they even have the pitching rate calculator on their site in that case...

well, they do also have 'pitchable' on their packaging 

And that's why I started this thread in the first place!