My first yeast starter

[Ducatiboy stu]

You have a yeast forge for your first ever starter!?

You dont need a yeast forge

You just need to understand the basics

 

[Yob]

You dont need a yeast forge

You just need to understand the basics

Why not? They are a bloody handy device, I can run starters in the shed in Vic winter at any temperature I want with these things

 

[Fraser's BRB]

I know I don't need a yeast forge, but i also know that I will get a better result with it than without.

My work hours, lack of space, a toddler and general laziness would prevent me getting a great outcome if I had to rely on shaking the starter and no heat.

 

[mofox1]

Dunno, Stu... sure you don't need it, but you do need the appropriate temps to get a healthy starter.

If I had a yeast forge, I wouldn't have to wait for my fermenting fridge to be empty in order to build up a starter for the next batch... I've done the stc controller heat mat in an early before, but it's a lot of mucking around.

Oh yeah, it's only going to get up to 10° here today.

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

Oh yeah, it's only going to get up to 10° here today.

Thats how cold it gets here overnight

 

[Fraser's BRB]

Dunno, Stu... sure you don't need it, but you do need the appropriate temps to get a healthy starter.

If I had a yeast forge, I wouldn't have to wait for my fermenting fridge to be empty in order to build up a starter for the next batch... I've done the stc controller heat mat in an early before, but it's a lot of mucking around.

Oh yeah, it's only going to get up to 10° here today.

The point on the temp control resonates for me also. With the YF I can have it happily spinning away on a corner bench whenever I like (for example last night when I did my second starter) rather than having to juggle space in one of my fermentation fridges which are currently occupied by a Celtic Red, an APA and an American Brown all bubbling away as well as assorted bottled beers.

Ambient temp in the house gets down around 10 overnight here.

 

[themonkeysback]

That's going from a smack pack/vial, when using washed slurry it's still ~ 500 mL of yeast (assuming thin slurry, high non yeast an depending on OG) so to get to that you need a large starter!

I checked out brewers friend, couldn't find the Troester- only White and Braukaiser methods, both indicate you would definitely be under pitching using the steps you outlined (assuming 1.020/5 P for starter wort).

Not sure about brewers friend program, but the website does have troester (braukaiser - stirplate) option:

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


Home brew dad calculator is based from kai's findings also. It has an 'overbuild' option for harvesting as well:

http://www.brewunited.com/yeast_calculator.php

Certainly the braukaiser options offer the possibility of a much smaller pitch, as to whether this is more accurate or not who knows really. My general thoughts are it is much easier to under than overpitch. Generally I would say best just pick one method and stick with it assuming you are happy with the beers it produces.

 

[A.B.]

Do you guys pour the whole starter in the wort or chill and separate?

 

[shacked]

Do you guys pour the whole starter in the wort or chill and separate?

Chill, decant then let rise to roughly pitching temp, then throw in.

 

[danestead]

Do you guys pour the whole starter in the wort or chill and separate?

It depends.

If the starter size is less than or equal to 5% of your batch size, I pitch the whole lot at high krausen.

If it's greater than 5% of the size, I chill and decant.

 

[Fraser's BRB]

As I'm usually brewing more than one beer in a day with different yeasts I tend to do my starters during the week, chill and decant most of the wort, then keep in the fridge for a few days until the weekend when I brew, pour off the remaining liquid, yeast straight into the fermenter.

This week I've just harvested 100B cells to go into the fridge for next time and 290ish B cells for my Dano's Hop Hog of WY1056 American Ale. It will sit in the fridge until I pitch on sat/sun.

Tonight I'm doing a second starter of WY1084 Irish Ale for my Celtic red (same deal pull off 100B cells for the fridge for next time and 290ish B cells for the beer).

Saturday morning I'll start another one of WY1968 London ESB, harvest off 100B again and pitch the remaining straight in on Sunday afternoon.

I've come a long way since my first one several weeks ago.

 

[Fraser's BRB]

Fast forward a couple of months and my latest yeast starter throws me a new learning opportunity.

Add a small amount of yeast nutrient as I usually do during a steady boil. BOOM! Wort volcano.

It spat about half a litre out the top before you could say "holy shit I've got a problem here!". Sigh, more mess to clean in SWMBO's kitchen and I still have to top up the starter and get it boiling again.

Perhaps I dropped the full amount of yeast nutrient in too fast, might add it pre-boil from now on.

 

[SBOB]

I did the same thing a couple of starters ago

Brain fart thinking 'I forgot to throw in the yeast nutrient, I'll just throw it in now', not thinking that chucking a 1/2 teaspoon of yeast nutrient in added about 1000 nucleation points for that almost boiling wort to quickly release some of its energy

 

[Fraser's BRB]

I did the same thing a couple of starters ago

Brain fart thinking 'I forgot to throw in the yeast nutrient, I'll just throw it in now', not thinking that chucking a 1/2 teaspoon of yeast nutrient in added about 1000 nucleation points for that almost boiling wort to quickly release some of its energy

I knew I wouldn't be Robinson Crusoe on this one.

The more I brew, the more I see that Gordon Strong was right in his writings, that brewing can be viewed as a system with many control points. The control points can be very simple, like when/how to add yeast nutrient to a starter, but forgetting about one or cutting a corner can lead to problems that are hard or impossible to rectify later in the process.

Edit: When I first read that stuff by Gordon Strong, I felt he was looking at brewing from an overcomplcated perspective. However, as my process has developed and advanced, I've seen that there's a lot more involved than first glance to make top quality beer.