Is my yeast starter good?

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This is only the second starter I've made. I'm using a stir plate. The first one I did on saturday morning, and I had a 1-2 inches of krausen by that evening when I pitched it. I started another from a different batch of washed yeast on Sunday morning, and it has been going for about 30 hours now. It started to get a small amount of krausen that afternoon, maybe 1/8", but it was gone by this morning. I do see lots of white creamy stuff swirling now, rather than just beige water. Is that be the yeast growing? It was done with 2 cups water, 1/2 cup dme on both batches. I planned to brew this evening, unless it sounds like my starter is bad or not ready. Any advice?
 
figure out what the OG of your starter was. then take a SG reading. if there is a difference then your starter fermented. if it fermented the yeast population grew. if the yeast population grew then you have a good starter ready for use.
 
Okay, SG is now 1.013. Total volume in the flask is 750ml. I used 1/2 cup of Briess Golden Light DME. I didn't weigh it, but am guessing about .125 pound as I read other DME's are about 4 cups/lb. Using an online calculator, it says my OG should have been 1.018. Does that sound right? Thanks for the help, I don't want to start brewing until I can tell if my yeast is good since it's all I have.
 
The calculator that said your OG should have been 1.018 is wrong, or you entered something wrong. but 1/2 cup DME to 2 cups water is right. That should give you an OG of about 1.040.
With a stir plate, I hardly ever get any krausen, but I can see the yeasts multiplying and swirling around like you described. However, a few weeks ago, I was making a WLP023 starter, and it went berserk, filling the flask with krausen, and making a mess all over the stir plate.

-a.
 
Sorry, I completely forgot I added water to bring it up to 750ml after mixing the 2C water/ 1/2C DME, so that would lower the OG. For some reason I thought I read to do that. I turned off the stir plate for a couple hours, and quite a bit of stuff settled to the bottom, so I went kicked it back on until I was done brewing. I was just a bit worried about it because the yeast was from my first washing attempt ever, and still had some trub:

yeastday2-3.jpg



As you can see here, my second attempt was much better. :)


second-yeast-wash.jpg



And the starter was good, cause it took off pretty quickly. It was pitched at about 11:00pm last night and this is it at 4:30pm today (about 18hrs).

DIS-Krausen.jpg
 
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