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illinibrew04 · 05-10-2009, 08:23 PM

OK, so I brewed a brown ale Thurs. morning and long story short, this is what happened:
-chilled only to 80F so waited to pitch starter until evening
-starter had then been going on stirplate about 32 hours
-yeast looked very flocculant already and when I pitched there was yeast left in the bottom of the flask (lots of it)
-hadn't started fermenting as of this AM so I figured it didn't get enough yeast
-I made a new starter this AM to pitch tomorrow morning
-Now there is some small amt. of krausen starting to form on the beer

Question is, will it hurt anything to pitch this additional starter? I hate to let that good liquid yeast go to waste. I hope this made sense.

**ChshreCat** · 05-10-2009, 08:27 PM

If your beer is taking off, you could work that starter up good and then split it up into a few small jars and store them away in the fridge. Then you could make a starter from each of them and do several batches off one yeast purchase.

**CharlosCarlies** · 05-10-2009, 08:55 PM

Quote:

-yeast looked very flocculant already and when I pitched there was yeast left in the bottom of the flask (lots of it)

Did you shake up your flask before pitching? I usually decant off most of the starter wort, swirl up the cake, and pitch. Alternatively you could have swirled the whole flask up and pitched the entire starter. Sounds like you left a good amount of yeast caked to the bottom of your flask.

As things worked out, if fermentation looks like it's kicking off....I'd probably just let it go and allow more time for conditioning down the road in case you get some off-flavors from under-pitching. The beer may end up totally fine though, so just RDWHAHB for the time being.

illinibrew04 · 05-10-2009, 10:05 PM

yeah I swirled it but in pouring so slowly as to not have the stir bar fly into the fermenter, it had already settled into the bottom. Any ill effects if I just pitch a starter into an already fermenting beer?

double_e5 · 05-11-2009, 01:25 AM

There won't be any bad effects but it isn't going to do much. If fermentation has started, just let it go. Do what ChshreCat said with your starter or get another brew going in the next couple days and pitch it into that.