yeast starter

I made my yeast starter tonight. Used a tube of White yeast, light DME, couple of hops pellets, 2 cups of water. Boiled everything except the yeast, cooled it to 80 degrees poured it in a sanitised bottle added the yeast and put on the airlock.

that was about 4 hours ago. I'm not getting any bubbling. Am I too anxious" Should I be seeing some soon?

Relax and give it some time. Give it a good shake a couple of times this evening...you should see some signs of activity when you get up tomorrow.

Can I shake it even with the airlock on? I forgot to mention that I put the lid on and shook it good (just like mama) before I put the airlock on.

It won't hurt to shake it some more...the idea here is yeast growth, not fermentation, so you want to continue to get as much oxygen in the wort as you can, IMHO.

I think it worked. I've not seen an actual bubble but the cap on air lock is raised.

Sounds good. On the few starters I've made so far, I've never seen much airlock activity, but there was plenty of yeast in there.

The purpose of a yeast starter is not to kickstart your starter, but your wort.

By making a starter the day prior you KNOW the yeast will work.

A starter is like an insurance policy. It tells you that it's alive and viable as well as giving you more yeast for your batch.

If you just pitched yeast into your primary you'd still have to wait the same amount of time for the yeast to start it's activity (lag time), but there's always that one time when the yeast is not good (and you waste several days to find out).

However, with a starter your yeast is already active and doing its thing.

That's why you pitch it into a primary (also shortens lag time).

So does it matter if I put the yeast in after or before the wort?

Pour the wort into your primary, top off to 5 or 5.5 gallons (whatever your batch size is), take an SG reading, then pitch the yeast and seal er up.

Exactly like he said! That's the process do not deviate from it.

Exception: when you pour your cooled wort on top of a yeast cake. It's too late to take an accurate reading.

However, you can always take an OG reading while it's in the container that has been cooled prior to pouring over the yeast cake.