want to brew today but yeast starter aint ready

This is one of the only days I can brew.. my starter won't be ready till Wednesday.. making an imperial stout, its prob gonna be around 11% abv.. my question is can I add yeast (non starter yeast) after I chill my wort then throw in the starter on Wednesday?

What kind of yeast are you using? And liquid or dry?

Without knowing your starting gravity and batch size, it's hard to say. If you're doing a big high gravity with expected abv of 11%, you'll likely need two dry yeast packs (but use a pitch rate calculator to determine this) or more of liquid. If you enough yeast, I'd just pitch (and rehydrate if dry) what you have and forget about the starter. If you don't, I personally wouldn't under-pitch and then add later. I'd just wait and brew another day. Or I'd brew a smaller gravity beer that will work with the amount of yeast you have on hand.

Thanks buddy.. I'll just be patient and wait till Saturday. Using liquid yeast, white labs Edinburgh. Just throwing out a rough estimate on the abv based on my usual brewers efficiency. I've been thinking about picking up another vial since its gonna be a very high gravity

You may want to wait around and see if anyone else has any differing opinions. I like to think I'm always right, but in reality, I'm proven wrong quite often here!

clintandhisbeer said:

This is one of the only days I can brew.. my starter won't be ready till Wednesday.. making an imperial stout, its prob gonna be around 11% abv.. my question is can I add yeast (non starter yeast) after I chill my wort then throw in the starter on Wednesday?

Click to expand...

This is just a strange thought for you to mull over. I brewed a batch of beer last year and instead of chilling it, I dumped the boiling hot wort into a fermenter bucket and put a sanitized lid on with an airlock that had just enough starsan in it to make a seal, then put it in my fermenter room at 62 degrees. It took about 30 hours to come down to the 62 degrees but I pitched the yeast then and it made good beer. Once it's in the fermenter bucket the boiling hot liquid will pasteurize the lid and it will keep for many hours since the only source of contamination is the air it sucks back in while cooling.