all grain starter

I wanted to work on a starter that was strictly 'all grain'. It's for an IPA recipe I have and now I'm having second thoughts... I need a little feedback.

I took a quart of water to a cup of grain and boiled it for about 10 minutes. Cooled and filtered into a growler and dumped my yeast. White Labs P013.

Now, I'm wondering if I let my 'mini-mash' boil long enough. I guess my thought was, 'less grain, less boil time' but now I'm second guessing myself with, 'different grain amount should be same boil time to extract'.

Anyway, any advice would be helpful as I don't want to waste $20 in grain....

Thanks!

Wait, what?

I think I get it. You will probably be fine. After all this is just a starter right. You should have nothing to worry about. 10-20 minute boils for starters are fine. Unless you want to hop them. I try not to waste too much time on starters, I decant them before I pitch anyway. In the future, if you want to continue doing this, I would do a half hour mini-mash in a small cooler even do a sparge of some kind then do a 20 minute boil. At least that is my opinion of an all-grain yeast starter. Good Luck.

So you did mash the grain, not just boil some malt in water. I see now. Yeah 15 min is fine.

It takes 15min to kill all bacteria. Did you mash the grain?

Yeah, I'm pretty sure now that I didn't think this through well enough... It's what I get for experimenting at 11 o'clock at night and intoxicated...

Thanks!

so its been about half a day, you should easlily have cell growth by now.

If you're concerned that there's nasties in there, smell and tasted the starter beer. If its clean you're probably all right.

Here's what I've done. Late last night, I attempted a quick 'mini-mash' in the hopes that I could get a starter going. I have never developed starters but, it sounded like the thing to do at the time! ...and being that I am new to all grain brewing, my thought process was 'screw it, just throw (the grain) in there (the boil) and see what happens. Not thinking about the fact that I had simply created a bowl of cereal, I cooled it and tossed in my yeast. Yep, $7.00 worth of yeast, right into a bowl of cereal. 'Yep, that'll work...'

Later, I started re-thinking what I had done and it posted here. ...and kinda got the response I was looking for, "So you did mash the grain, not just boil some malt in water." Well, fudge... That's what I get for playing around in the kitchen and drinking at the same time.

This afternoon, I was getting ready to dump the contents of my growler and it dawned on me, I did boil the grain. I did let the grain cool before I threw my yeast in... and the airlock hasn't moved... Hmmm... Maybe I didn't screw this up as bad as I thought! 'OMG! That poor yeast is in that grower and it's starving!! I must save it!'

So, I improvised a double boiler and got my 'mini mash tun' (saucepan) temp set at 152', which is what the recipe called for and mashed another cup of grain for 60 minutes. I ran that through a strainer and sparged my 'mini mash' with another 1 1/2 cups of water, set at 160'. I have no real rhyme or reason why I used this amount or this temperature. I knew that I would lose heat during the sparge, so I set my temp a little higher.

Anyway, I boiled that for about 20 minutes and let it cool to 75'. Meanwhile, I drained off all of the clear liquid in my grower, leaving the yeast. I put my small batch of wort in the grower with the yeast and now, I have a happy airlock.

The only thing I'm worried about now is the 10 minute boil on my first 'attempt'. If it didn't kill off all the baddies, I'll have to restart this whole process with another vial of yeast...








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I'm sorry for sounding condescending dude, I know we all learn things differently...

Hey for what its worth if I knew that the yeast had never gotten too hot and smelled/tasted okay...I'd probably make a batch with it out of sheer attachment to the little buggers!

No, I take it back after reading the procedure again. This thread confuses me.