Trough Lolly
"Drink, Feck, Arse, Girls"!
- Joined
- 21/8/03
- Messages
- 1,692
- Reaction score
- 7
Today I made a yeast starter using a smack pack of 1028 London Ale...
It's no big deal that I bought it in a HBS in Ballarat last week and when I safely got it home here in Canberra (via an esky in the car) I noticed two things.
Firstly, it had a Grain and Grape sticker on it and the made date was Sep 03! :huh: Which makes this smack pack the best part of 3+ months old...
I smacked it on Friday night and it looked like it had expanded (not sure though - this is my first smacking!!) by this morning (Sunday) so I made a 3 litre SG 1040 starter with some boiled and chilled Light DME and two thirds filled three large PET bottles with the wort and XL smack pack contents mixed into the cooled wort (at about 25C from memory).
Shook the buggery out of the PET bottles, bunged them with an airlock and now some 8 hrs later the froth from shaking has gone and there's very little action in the airlock - some displacement of the airlock water to show there's some CO2 in there but nothing on the wort surface - just three bottles of flat looking amber brew.
The airlocks are in tight so no leaks there - is this smack pack too old? Or am I looking for results too soon??? Am I correct in assuming that I leave the three bottles for 24 to 48 hrs and put the starter into stubbies at high krausen?
This is my first attempt at cultivating yeast starters so any advice or reassurance would go down real well right now!
By the way - the price I paid for the smack pack was about $3 more than the cost listed on Grain and Grape... :angry:
Cheers,
TL
It's no big deal that I bought it in a HBS in Ballarat last week and when I safely got it home here in Canberra (via an esky in the car) I noticed two things.
Firstly, it had a Grain and Grape sticker on it and the made date was Sep 03! :huh: Which makes this smack pack the best part of 3+ months old...
I smacked it on Friday night and it looked like it had expanded (not sure though - this is my first smacking!!) by this morning (Sunday) so I made a 3 litre SG 1040 starter with some boiled and chilled Light DME and two thirds filled three large PET bottles with the wort and XL smack pack contents mixed into the cooled wort (at about 25C from memory).
Shook the buggery out of the PET bottles, bunged them with an airlock and now some 8 hrs later the froth from shaking has gone and there's very little action in the airlock - some displacement of the airlock water to show there's some CO2 in there but nothing on the wort surface - just three bottles of flat looking amber brew.
The airlocks are in tight so no leaks there - is this smack pack too old? Or am I looking for results too soon??? Am I correct in assuming that I leave the three bottles for 24 to 48 hrs and put the starter into stubbies at high krausen?
This is my first attempt at cultivating yeast starters so any advice or reassurance would go down real well right now!
By the way - the price I paid for the smack pack was about $3 more than the cost listed on Grain and Grape... :angry:
Cheers,
TL