slow ferm with a starter?

Ok Wed of Kats week I started a 1L starter with white labs dry English ale yeast. The starter was very active on my stirplate. Brewed on Saturday and pitched at 73. I put a blow off line on it . It is fermenting but it hasn't really been vvery aggressive. Should I be worried ?

RDWHAHB.

Don't worry about how aggressive your fermentation is. If it's fermenting, you've done all you can.

So there is a slight bubble and no Krause what so ever. And this is a huge beer! Around 9 percent. It should be a big fermentation. Shield I give it a stir?

Batch OG? Recipe? What temperature is it at now (both fermenting beer and ambient)?

OG was 1.102. This yeast strain should be able to handle it no problem. I went ahead and shook it up and it is one bubbling at a steady pace. Don't know if that is cause it is shook up or if it is waking up

Bigapinnc said:

OG was 1.102. This yeast strain should be able to handle it no problem. I went ahead and shook it up and it is one bubbling at a steady pace. Don't know if that is cause it is shook up or if it is waking up

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A 1L starter for a batch with an OG of 1.102????

That's beyond under-pitching. IF the yeast was super fresh (as in less than a week old) a 2.75L starter would have been the correct size (assuming 5 gallon batch size).

How did you oxygenate the wort before pitching? If you didn't use pure O2, you also under-oxygenated by a substantial margin. All that leads to a long lag phase for the yeast (and stresses them out man)...

BTW, I highly recommend you get the Yeast book and read it. Properly handling your yeast will give you better batches, with faster starts, among other things.

Ok thanks I will have to get that. Do you think I can do another starter and add it to it? Or is it ruined?

It's not ruined, it's just taking longer for the yeast to replicate to the level needed to ferment the brew. They're going to be more stressed and their cell walls won't be as strong, but they'll get the job done. Just be prepared to give the batch more time to get rid of any off flavors, or to become better/great.

If you cannot get a larger flask, look into making stepped starters (yeastcalc.com makes it easy to figure out). If you're not already doing so, start using yeast nutrient in the beer wort boil to help the yeast out too. I'd also go ahead and get a pure O2 infusion setup ASAP. I've listed the parts I don't know how many times on various threads already. 60-120 seconds of pure O2 at 1-2LpM can do wonders for your beer.

Ok thanks so much. I did do yeast nutrient so that is good. I am putting in an order for everything tonight. I plan in aging this beer for a time anyways so

For the O2 setup, get the wand from William's Brewing (no dinky regulator) and then get this regulator and an O2 bottle/tank from a welding supply store. Get the nut to go to 3/16" ID tubing to go to the regulator too (from the welding supply store). Then you'll be ready to rock and roll there. I've been using a very similar setup with great success. The fact that the regulator goes to standard O2 tanks, and has the LpM rating on it is huge.

I'd also get the foam stoppers for the flasks you have, or will have. Having good gas exchange makes for much faster starters. Then it's just a matter of stepping them up as needed to get the yeast cell count you need for the batch. Yeastcalc.com is a solid site for figuring out up to three steps in the starter. Unlike the mrmalty site which only does a single step. You can get far more yeast cells with two small steps than you can with one huge step.

Bigapinnc said:

So there is a slight bubble and no Krause what so ever. And this is a huge beer! Around 9 percent. It should be a big fermentation. Shield I give it a stir?

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I guess when you said "it's fermenting but not very aggressive", I was picturing less of an understatement.

I second most of the advice you've received from Golddiggie so far.