Too late for a yeast starter?

I meant to make a starter last night for a Tripel that I am brewing tomorrow. but I forgot. Is it possible to do a starter tonight and get a decent one in 12-14 hours? Or should I just get another vial of yeast?

Why not pitch a day later?

12-14 hours is a bit on the short side. It depends on when you want to brew tomorrow. If you can stretch the start time out to about 18 hours from the starter time you will probably be better off, but 12-14 hours you should have a fair amount of colony growth. Will you be using a stir plate for the starter? How big a beer are you brewing?

If buying more yeast is no big deal you could go that route as well.

Edit: As Pol said you could also brew at your planned time, cover the wort up when done and delay your pitch for several hours.

Yep, just wait until the starter is ready. You could even add some of your new wort from the batch to the starter, wait 24 hours and pitch.

So brew and wait to pitch. sounds good. I had considered it but never heard of anyone doing that. Makes sense. Thanks everybody.

BTW, it's an extract tripel with about 12 lbs of fermentables.

That sounds like a fairly big beer assuming most of those lbs of fermentables are coming from LME/DME. You definitely want to make a nice big starter and give it time to grow out for that beer. Just make sure your sanitation is spot on and you keep the wort sealed against nasties getting in.

just a warning... if you decide to not wait, make sure you pitch the entire starter... i tried to crash cool my starter that was far too quick, then i crash cooled for a few hours and then decanted (all the good yeast) off the wort and pitched the rest.

The thing is, even if it's NOT ready...a starter that at least is beginning to work, is STILL BETTER than pitching yeast without a starter. And POSSIBLY better than delaying pitching and leaving a wort sitting un yeasted, and vulnerable to other micro-organisms.

It may not be ideal, but if the yeast have woken up to start tackling your starter, than it going to be less of a shock for them if you dumped them into your wort.

There's is some thought that with starters the best time to pitch them is at "High Krausen" that means during active fermentation of the starter, NOT as we often do, after the yeast has flocculated. More than likely you are going to be close to high krausen at 12-14 hours, meaning the yeast will be pretty active, and if you pitch everything in like NNatic suggests you will be dumping yeasts that should be past the lag and starting to wake up.

I once had a brew schedule change and pitched a combination of a 10 hour starter and an extra tube of the same yeast which I picked up on the way to the brew, and fermentation took off really fast.

My last batch I pitched my starter (real wort starter) at high krausen and it took off very fast I saw airlock movement within 2 hours probably.

Limited Visibility said:

My last batch I pitched my starter (real wort starter) at high krausen and it took off very fast I saw airlock movement within 2 hours probably.

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I did the same thing over the weekend. Meant to make a starter the previous day, but didn't have time, so I took a little LME and boiled it in a cup of water in the microwave, and then cooled it off. Pitched yeast into the cup, and then did my brew, and pitched the whole thing at the end.

The starter cup had one heck of a krausen going on when I pitched it, and seemed to work pretty well. I assume there's probably a benefit to be had from letting it go for a couple of days, but unless you're doing something radical, most of the process seems to be pretty fool proof.

The Pol said:

Why not pitch a day later?

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Yeah, me too. I consistently pitch late because i want the real wort for the starter. The brew wort just goes into one cooler and the starter and stir plate into the other.