hist-brewing: How much yeast?

[Angus]

I usually make a yeast starter whenever I make mead or beer.  Just dissolve 30 ml/3 grams of sugar in roughly 3 dl of water and bring to a boil.  Let it boil for 10 minutes and set aside covered to cool.
Add yeast and room temp sugar solution to a well cleaned bottle (i use 0.5l PET Coke bottles) and give it a good shake to aerate. Shake it every now and then to keep it aerated (to get the yeast to multiply instead of producing alcohol).  Some use air pumps for aquariums to keep the starter solution constantly aerated. 
After 2 days the starter is usually ready to use.
I can't give you an exact number on how much to use
but I've seen the figure 2% yeast slurry a few times.
This means 0.5l yeast slurry is sufficient for a 25l batch.  Personally I've mostly used less than this though, more like 0.5-1% and all batches have come out OK.  The key is to use really active yeast to get the fermentation going quickly, 6-8 hrs for a beer, meads tend to be a bit slower from my experience.

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