Using starters for experimental beers

[seehuusen]

Hey fellow brewers,

I read an article on HBT a while back, about not wasting the beer you've essentially made with your starter...
So I decided to take heed of that with my last brew, and poured 1L of beer to the side in a glass jar and swirled up the yeast and put it into my wort, as we would normally do.

I was of course left with pretty bland beer. LDME and water doesn't really give anything exciting, even when fermented...
When doing starters, I do generally save a little sip, just to taste the characteristics of the yeast without any other influence.

To increase the flavour a bit, I chucked some Centennial into the jar, just a small handful of pellets, probably around 3g.
The jar I let sit in the fermentation fridge, and it has dryhopped for 10 days now.
I thought to myself, I'm about to do a Coffee infused Blonde ale, why not try the beans out on my experimental LDME/Centennial jar. So in went about 10 coffee beans.
I'm following Mike the mad fermentationist's method, where you add coffee to the beer at the end of the dry hop schedule, rather than cold press etc.

24 hours in, and the smell is out of this world, citrussy and fruity, with a lovely hint of fresh ground coffee...
I'll bottle 1 measly little homebrew bottle from this, good or bad, I'll know when it has conditioned for a bit I guess.

Other ideas for testing is

• Making a mini hop tee to get some bitterness into my experimental brews.
• Wild infections
• Odd additions, herbs experiments, or maybe peanut power and bacon salt, why not?
• How long for grassy/woody notes with X hop variety

Of course, those who save the bottom dregs in the boil kettle could make new recipes etc. your imagination is the limit really.
I have read that you shouldn't be making starters from too hoppy wort, as that can affect the yeast production, within reason should be OK though.

Obviously, it is incredibly important to keep notes about what you did, in case that single bottle is out of this world and you absolutely must rebrew that in full scale

I just thought I'd share my method of not throwing away starter beer, and using it for experimentation instead

Anyone else do this?


Cheers,
Martin

 

[Midnight Brew]

I love your approach to experimenting and ideas that you to to experiment. That being said, if using a stir plate for your yeast starter the beer is oxidised to a level that wouldn't be pleasant to drink and render the whole process a waste.

Do you aerate your starters?

 

[seehuusen]

Good point, thanks for adding that to the discussion, I do use a stir plate.

This is what I do, when I make the starter:

1. Add the LDME to the sanitized Erlenmyer flask (I use about 205g for 2L, which nets about 1.040 gravity)
2. Add 2L of boiling water, stir it up by swirling the flask. (at this point I cover the flask with sanitized foil held in place using a rubber band)
3. Cool the wort down in an ice bath. I've got a bunch of ice packs that I use for this.
4. Once cool, I whisk the wort up at full whack on the stir plate, to get some oxygen into the wort.
5. Turn the stir plate off
6. Add the yeast I'm starting up.
7. Turn the stirrer to a rate where it is stirring, but not adding air into the wort.

I've personally not noted any off oxidisation flavours from any of my starters using this method.

Cheers,
Martin

 

[Yob]

Erm.. Isn't the whole idea to get oxygen into the wort?

If it's moving, it's getting air

 

[danestead]

I cant emagine the starter would taste great as if you are tryiñg to grow the best yeast you can, you are probably fermenting it too hot and if you are actually fermenting the starter at a good temp to make nice beer, you probably arent setting the starter the ideal conditions for growing yeast.

Good idea, but not for me.

 

[seehuusen]

Interesting oxygen comments, thanks for contributing.
It would be valuable to understand what you do different in your starter processes to me. It would appear my process is more gentle than yours?!
As mentioned before, I've never had any oxygenated taste issues with my starters, nor have I ever had any issues with any starter I've pitched. In fact, most of the time I actually think I over-pitch!

I assume you guys are tasting the starter beer made?
I do every time, as it gives me a fantastic idea of what the yeast is like a) in this incarnation b) for this strain. If for whatever reason it was off, or I don't like the flavour, I'd never pitch it...
Touch wood, that hasn't happened yet

My theory regarding stir plates isn't to oxygenate all the time, nor to keep it at a much higher temp. Here's why:
Yeast, when splitting at a higher temperature, to my mind, becomes accustomed to that temp. I know there's a general consensus of 22-ish degrees for growth rate, but I go down to 19-20 for mine (ales is what I generally brew).
Oxygen does assist yeast to grow more rapidly and thrive better, but that's not what they get in the fermenter. So I stir at a lower level, no oxygen goes into my vortex. This to my mind creates more resilient yeast. The number of people that don't oxygenate their wort would be much higher than those who does, yet good beer is still produced...

Perhaps our techniques are different, I certainly don't taste anything bad in my starter beers, and enjoy experimenting.
Try turning down your stir plate speed and give it a go :chug:

 

[danestead]

Have you bottled your starters and drunk them at a later date when the oxidation has had a chance to turn your beer to cardboard? Have you done a bjcp certification or used off flavour kits to accertain that you actually know and can detect the oxidation off flavours? I havent done either of those however ive had off flavours detected in my beers in comps which I hadnt detected myself.

Most of what you are saying goes against best practice of what the experts like john palmer, zamil zainecheff etc write in their texts and say on their pod casts. Your starters may taste amazing, and ive never tried mine, however it is going pretty far left of field for what the experts say. Just remember that when you do a starter, the ideal conditions are different than the ideal conditions for fermenting a beer because you are trying to create a certqin amount of the healthiest yeast you can to pitch into your wort to create the best tasting beer you can. There is a difference in growing the healthiest yeast to fermenting the best tasting beer.

 

[seehuusen]

Hi danestead, you make some great points about oxidizing beer, thanks for contributing ^_^


I'm aware that my methods might not always be best practice when it comes to crafting a beer from my starters, as I've used a stir plate the whole time, let's call that an experiment in itself.
If you were worried about oxidation in your experiments, don't use the stirrer and accommodate for that when calculating yeast count.
To pick another flaw, you'd be over pitching in the first place anyway, this isn't the point of the OP though.
At the end of the day, we're only creating about a bottle of beer to experiment with, rather than chucking it out on the lawn... If it ends up tasting terrible, then the lawn can have it

The point of my OP was that you should experiment, be it with oxidization levels or otherwise.
With that one bottle, I'm more than happy to go against every expert in the field and try something different, I don't generally do that with my full batches.
Of course, if my trials prove someone wrong, it leads to a good conversation on here, right?

I'd suggest next time you make a starter, bottle a beer from it and find out for yourself what oxidation actually tastes like, that'd give you a great indication of what your competition beer is like too (and perhaps if the judges were off field on their comments in the first place, taste is extremely subjective)

The experimental beers were not created for storage or aging in my case, but more so to try out flavour combinations or wacky ideas that I'd not want to spend an entire batch on.
Perhaps ageing will become another experiment in the future. For now, it's just a bonus beer that I'm having a bit of fun with.

I hope this clarifies the subject a bit, and I truly hope you at least have a sip of your starter beer next time.
IMO experimentation is key to finding new flavours and allowing us to view this great hobby of ours from a different angle from time to time.

Cheers,
Martin

PS. I've got more strange ideas, What about a basil infused beer to go with tomato soup? or a mint infused beer to make gravy for your lamb roast?

 

[seehuusen]

I had a search through my bookmarks and found the original idea on HBT: http://www.homebrewtalk.com/make-beer-not-starters.html

 

[Yob]

The yeast book.. A good place to start.

I'll point out again, if you have wort movement at the surface you have a level of oxygen getting in.

Do you test for DO?

 

[seehuusen]

I'm with you on the yeast book, great read.
I think the point of oxidization has been thoroughly made at this stage, thanks for contributing.

To not scare away the faint of heart person looking to do some experimenting in the first place...
To guarantee no oxidization AND still experiment as per OP, don't use the stirrer.
Read the link I posted earlier, in short this is the process:

1. Get a suitable sized Erlenmeyer flask to make a starter in
2. Make the wort/ use previously saved wort, and pitch the yeast
3. Ferment it out
4. Crash chill
5. Decant the beer into another container and pitch the yeast slurry from the starter into the full batch.

Your pitch rate would need to be calculated with aeration method of none.

Or, like I've done, experiment and see what happens when you use a stirrer.
At least if you find something unusual, you'll get a good conversation about it

In my humble opinion, just because a book states that something is that way, or a pod cast with a respected brewer says something is another way, you don't necessarily take that as gospel and don't experiment yourself...
If up until now you've just gone by other people's experience, or you're a curious brewer, then I recommend doing yourself a favour and try the above experiment. Re-inventing the wheel will at least give you a better understanding of why things are a certain way. Best case scenario, you invent something new to you, worst case you loose 1 bottle of beer that you'd been throwing away previously anyway.

 

[Yob]

You have made some pretty broad statements that contradict known truth's.

If you don't test for DO, and you are using a stir bar, how do you account for the statement that you get no oxygen in?

Yeast will grow (healthier) in the presence of oxygen, making a starter without oxygen seems to be counter intuitive, the whole idea is to make a healthy population.

I don't at all mean to detract from you experimenting, I've been playing with yeast for years now and know there to be vast differences in growth between stirring and not stirring

 

[seehuusen]

What I stated above is what I have found in my experiments, by no means do I say that this is the case for everyone.
I have not tasted any traces of oxygen in my tests, yet. No book can change what is still my experience, that doesn't mean they're not right, or you have had different results

There is no doubt in anyone's mind that using a stir bar gives a higher cell count. That is why you accommodate for this when you calculate the size of your starter.

Once again, we're talking about small scale experiments from a bi-product of your normal brewing processes.
I personally learn much more from experimenting than I do from reading a book, I also get much more satisfaction from it.

Please, the point of the thread is derailing a bit, feel free to PM me or start another thread about theories on oxygenation.
Let's get chatting about fun small scale experiments :beer: