Starters - dump or decant?

yellowthere said:

your yeast are way, way spoiled. that is way too much work for a starter for me.

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I happen to agree with you, and recently I am re-assessing my yeast strategies. I have bought a lot of dry yeasts and I am going to begin using them whenever possible.

However, for a few beer styles (belgians, hefe's) I will continue to make my foo foo fungus fondue. It's not really a lot of work, but it requires more advanced planning than I care to do.

I find it hard to fit in brew days and my wife is already convinced that I'm far too obsessed with brewing. She's probably right. If I can get away with using a dry yeast I do it. I've gone from all-grain to extract when I can as well. With 3 kids I have to cut down my time spent brewing considerably.

passedpawn said:

I happen to agree with you, and recently I am re-assessing my yeast strategies. I have bought a lot of dry yeasts and I am going to begin using them whenever possible.

However, for a few beer styles (belgians, hefe's) I will continue to make my foo foo fungus fondue. It's not really a lot of work, but it requires more advanced planning than I care to do.

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Dry yeast are great with most styles, not all but most. They are so damn easy too. I even had really good luck with safelager 189. You can get it at american brewmaster. that's what I plan on using for all my future lagers.

I usually do 4 cup starters, sometimes 6 and just pitch the whole thing. Sometimes it's at high krausen, other times somewhere else in the process. I don't think I'd pitch 2L though...that is a lot.

Just wanted to follow up here since I was the first one to get completely disgusted at the idea of *tasting* the starter beer (can't really call it wort anymore). I made a Kolsch starter about 3 days ago, had it in the fridge for about 36 hours and just decanted. I poured myself a bit and gave it a taste.

Observations:
1) Not good, but tastes eerily similar to something I've paid a buck for and came in a can with a blue ribbon.
2) Very little to no hop bitterness, flavor, or aroma. :fro:

OK, enough with the jokes. I used extra light DME (as I do with all starters) and it tasted like basically nothing. I did however get a fair bit of esters from the Kolsch yeast. I now see that this is an extremely valuable tasting tool, especially for yeasts such as Kolsch where its supposed to impart some flavor, but not overwhelming flavors (wheat, belgian yeasts) to really get an idea of exactly what the yeast is bringing to the party. Now that I know, I can see using this yeast in many more styles, just by imagining what this flavor goes with. I'm now very happy I ridiculed someone in this this thread for drinking their starter! :rockin:

I've decanted only because it's a little more convenient to refrigerate and have some more flexibility with when I'm going to brew. I have 3 kids like the guy above and my son is always bugging me about when we're going to be "beering." Get them involved, they like this sort of stuff, especially the yeast that "fart" through the airlock...