Yeast starter mistake

I just got finished with my first starter and it looked wrong to me, a lot darker than the ones I've seen in pic's. Then I realized that I used 1cup DME instead of 1/2cup and 2cups water. Should I be worried? It's for a chocolate oatmeal porter I'm gonna brew on Saturday.

If my numbers are correct, you're at roughly 1.300 OG on your starter. That's way too high. I don't even know what the yeast is going to do.

It's only been an hour, so what I would do is boil another 2 cups of water just by itself, cool it down to ~80° and just add that to your starter.

*edit* forgot to put in the numbers last night. I'm not doing the math again, but I think that's what I came up with.

I agree. Dilute it some. It'll be fine.

A4J said:

It's only been an hour, so what I would do is boil another 2 cups of water just by itself, cool it down to ~80° and just add that to your starter.

Click to expand...

Agreed, then grab a sanitized mason jar and save the extra for your next batch.

Damn! Wish I would've thought about that last night! Think it'll be ok if I do it now or has it been too long?

Yeah, it's been too long. I would just chuck it and start all over again.

I'd say that if you can stand the delay, starting over is the safest bet.

However, you could also check the gravity of your starter wort to see if it fermented. If it did, then you could consider just running with it to see what happens. It's not ideal, but it's likely to produce beer. You probably didn't kill your yeast.

It depends on how you personally value your brewing schedule versus ensuring a clean fermentation versus the cost risk of losing a batch.

Or you could just cold crash your starter, decant the wort of the yeast, and step it up with new wort. I'm still a beginner too, but i don't think over that short of time your yeast would have suffered too many mutations.

I figured I was too late, so I just started over. Thanks for the input though.