to high of gravity on my yeast starter

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malt20

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i made a 1.4 liter starter but the gravity came out to 1.045 through beer smith. I know it's suppose to be 1.040. So i guess my question is... is this higher gravity going to be o k or is it going to stress the yeast out or give me some off flavors. going to brew brewing tomorrow. hope its ok!
 
.05 difference won't be an issue. I don't even do a hydro on my starters. Every 1 Liter or water gets 1 cup of DME. No worries, you don't have to be that exact when making a starter.
 
You will be fine.. Yes we "try" and keep them between 1.038 and 1.040 but that's just a good baseline. Now hitting the 1.050 would be pushing it but you'll be fine. Heck I have customers that will make starters in the 1.080 range (against my suggestions 1.040 of course);)

Cheers
Jay
 
its the cali yeast from white labs. did some more calcs and it might be closer to 1.050, ****..... I guess i'll just roll with it. still got to be better then just pitching the vile right???
 
You've got nothing to worry about. If you pitch 24-48 hours after starting the starter it'd be ideal... yeast will have reproduced but won't have worked through all the sugars to produce the alcohol which would be harmful to some of the cells (but even if you didn't pitch until it had fully fermented it wouldn't make a noticeable difference).
 
malt20 said:
its the cali yeast from white labs. did some more calcs and it might be closer to 1.050, ****..... I guess i'll just roll with it. still got to be better then just pitching the vile right???

It will be fine. It won't be vile I promise ;)
 
Is 1.028 to low for a starter. I do 1/2 gal. starters. I ran of some extra wort during an all grain brew and want to can it for future starters.
 
It is pretty low, can you boil it to ~1.035?
Or you can save it for propagation of low vitality yeast.
 
The gravity doesn't matter a whole lot. Less sugar is less final yeast cells. More sugar is more final cells. If you are really worried about it add a little DME to bring the gravity up or a little water to bring the gravity down.

If the gravity is extremely low you risk bacteriological contamination. If it is extremely high you risk damaging the yeast, but you would have to really mess something up to be near a problem area.

The final cell count is roughly proportional to the amount of sugar. So if you made a 1.028 instead of a 1.035 then you will have 80% of the cells you planned for. If you made a 1.050 instead of 1.035 then you will have 42% more cells.

(Mr. Malty and Yeast Calc were developed with a set of experiments at 1.035 or 9 degrees Plato.)
 
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