HangLoose

Recipes 

Can I lager my lager starter for a week or two if I want to? Ok, this all started with a Cream of Three Crops ALE. I pitched a tube of White Labs 001 with out a starter (I know I know- it showed up in the mail on brew day- NEVER AGAIN!).

I have been building up a starter of White Labs 830 German Lager yeast in preparation for brewing on Saturday (tomorrow)(my first lager BTW) and I'm up to 2 liters. Now I'm thinking of just brewing it as a light ale (with safeale US-05) and then just racking my apparently stuck Cream of Three Crops ale right on top of the yeast cake after its done the primary -in like 5 days to a week.

Anyway can I just take my 2 liter starter and leave if sit in the fridge at say 40 degrees (or more or less -this fridge is only being used for BEER! lol) and then decant the beer and pitch the yeast from the starter later? Should I wake it early and maybe add another liter of fresh wort to get it going again? I'm thinking the answers are all going to be yes yes yes but I'm not exactly sure. What do you think I should do- with the starter or the whole thing?

bad coffee

Recipes 

I'd let that light ale go for more than 5 days on the cake. Let it go at least 14, then rack to a secondary or wait 21 days and go straight to keg/bottle. Then dump the stuck Three Crops on the cake.

If you're not going to use the starter up in the next few days, I'd chill it, decant some spent wort and add some fresh to liven it up before you use it for a beer. Wake those yeasties up!

B

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