swatman260

Recipes 

I was planning on brewing saturday, but because of the weather, it would be better to brew tomorrow. I did a yeast starter this morning around 0500, so by the time I am ready for it, the starter will have been on the stir plate about 30 hours. If I use the whole starter instead of cold crashing the yeast, it should be fine, right? I'm new to making starters and don't want to ruin my beer.

Gremlyn

Recipes 

Stop the starter at 24 hours and stick it in the fridge, decant, then cold pitch the starter and you're good to go.

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swatman260

Recipes 

5-6 hours of cold crashing will be long enough to be effective?

theonetrueruss

Recipes 

I just make my starter 24 hours ahead of pitching and pitch the whole thing. I think that probably is fine since the starter is probably still going to have some residual fermentation left and will not have started to develop stale flavors.. I do put some hops in my starter to keep in tune a little with my wort flavor profile and ward off bacteria. Anyhow.. I've gotten good clean tasting beer that way. Going to try out the cold crash decanting on a brew later this month though since it'll be a big belgian dark and I don't want to water down the flavors with my starter.

indigi

Recipes 

5-6 hours of cold crashing will allow you to pour off at least a portion of the starter beer. I'd just pitch the whole thing in that situation though, it'll be vigorously fermenting and you'll get a great start.

TANSTAAFB

Recipes 

+1 to pitching the whole starter. It will probably be at high krausen which is when you WANT to pitch unless you are going to make it several days in advance to maximize reproduction, cold crash, decant, and pitch.

RDWHAHB, its REALLY hard to screw up beer!!!

bobz

Recipes 

Never ever pitch your starter. Pitch only the slurry. Off flavors and other bad things can happen.
bobz

TANSTAAFB

Recipes 

Where in hell did you hear that?

I will have to respectfully but forcefully disagree with you...I have brewed the same recipe with the only difference being one I planned ahead more and pitched slurry and one I forgot so pitched the whole starter at high krausen and noticed no "off flavors or bad things" whatsoever.

Not to mention the thousands of experienced brewers who say the same...

bobz

Recipes 

I respect your opinion but you are taking a chance. Starters are notorious for off flavors and other things. Pitching starter is not good practice. The complexities of yeast propagation are enormous. I do not want to write a book but reference Dr. Fix and Dr.White
and others.
Good beer is no accident but accidents can happen.
bobz

kanzimonson

Recipes 

I disagree on problems with pitching the whole starter. Yes, they can smell and taste weird at the time they go into the wort, but I find that the actual fermentation cleans all of that up.