Starter Drinkable?

I'm making a big starter for a barleywine coming up, and I decided to just use some of the Maris Otter I had on hand because I ran out of DME, and while I was at it a threw in a couple hop pellets.

So...anyone ever tried to ferment and bottle your starter wort after pouring it off your yeast slurry?

all i can think is...yuck.

do you really want to drink oxygenated partially fermented wort with a high concentration of yeast? Sounds like a great recipe for a fart cocktail and not much else.

Your Lower GI tract will hate you in ways that words cannot describe

Oh, I'm not going to do it. Just wondered if anyone has. These are very different things. But thank you for the warning. I can't imagine the yeast that would be at the bottom on that bottle, or my gut. :cross:

doggage said:

Oh, I'm not going to do it. Just wondered if anyone has. These are very different things. But thank you for the warning. I can't imagine the yeast that would be at the bottom on that bottle, or my gut. :cross:

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i doubt you'd die. if you want your significant other to hate you on top of your bowels as mentioned above, i say go for it!

If you listen to the last episode of Can You Brew It about Riggwelter, Jamil talks about how he was stepping up a starter from a year old packet of some English VSS strain that Wyeast gave him which he'd never tried before. He thought that it was so good he drank about a pint of it. It was pretty amusing to hear, he seems to really, really like that yeast.

I made a small batch out of the beer that I decanted off of the starter. The starter sat in the refrigerator for a few days before I decanted so I got little yeast in the bottle. Before I bottled I put a few hop pellets in a small amount of boiling water to get some bitterness then poured it in the bottle. Actually, now that I think of it I dry hopped with a cone of something or other before I bottled. Long story short, eh, I had a few sips and laughed at the process then dumped it out. It was a fun experiment, but that's it. Do it if your in between batches and need something beery(?) to do. The math may excite you
AM

I tastes every starter I make to see how it is, especially if it's a new yeast for me. But then I chill it for two days first and decant the liquid off before pitching, and I drink some of this liquid I decanted off the slurry so it's no longer full of yeast. It's a good way to see what the yeast character.

A lot of folks will make an ordinary bitter, or even better (for these purposes) a Scottish 60 or 70 Shilling to act as a starter for a big beer. The Scottish is probably the best choice, as there will be virtually no hop flavor in the slurry you use for your next batch.

Jamil has talked about this a lot- he says that he brewed one of those smaller beers solely to grow yeast, and ended up loving the little session beer he got in the meantime.

So, make 5 gallons (or less) of 1.037 (or so) starter, with a bit of crystal and maybe some victory, and then hop it a bit. Call it beer but treat it like starter.

Oh, totally. A few times I've made an IPA and used the yeast cake for a Baltic Porter.

When I see that beautiful yeast cake on the bottom of the carboy I just keep thinking a yeast cake is a terrible thing to waste.

I was more curious about how small of a starter is drinkable. In other words, at what point does a large undrinkable starter become a low-volume drinkable beer.