Is 4 days too long for stir plate?

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BrewAlchemy

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Alright, I made a yeast starert stir plate late monday night to use today (wednesday) however some things came up and i cannot brew till friday now. Should i just keep it on the stir plate or take it off and store in a fridge til friday or put it in the fridge tonight and they wake it back up thursday night. What are my options and what would you guys recommend?
 
I would put it in the fridge, then decant and pitch on Friday, no need to "wake" it back up.

_
 
I recently made a starter and my brewing kept getting delayed for various reasons. It was two and a half weeks later that I actually used that starter and all the time it sat at room temperature. I was a little concerned that it might not be a good decision to use a starter that had been sitting around so long. I decanted and pitched the slurry anyway. The fermentation proceeded normally and it finished out to the desired FG in only six days @ 62*F. The beer came out just fine. This is not at all the recommended way to roll, but the delay seemed to cause no problems whatsoever.
 
There are actual benefits to chilling the yeast once it's had a full munch on some starter wort. From what I understand, the yeast are tricked into going dormant from the cold temperatures and build up their cell walls as a natural preservative reaction. During the lag phase, the yeast replicate until their cell walls are thin and then they get to munching the wort! So refrigerating the starter, decanting the beer, and then pitching the slurry is not only perfectly normal-- it helps!
 
It was two and a half weeks later that I actually used that starter and all the time it sat at room temperature.

You can get away with this as long as your sanitation is perfect, the trouble comes when a small infection gets in there it gives them more time to build up numbers eating the high order sugars that our yeast doesn't then they can cause damage when pitched into the wort.

I would put it in the fridge decant and pitch the slurry.

Clem
 
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