Using wort from my brews for future starters

So, I brew about once a week. Always have beer in my fermenters. I always make a starter and I harvest the from the starter. However, all that DME is costing me more than I want. Part of what I love about brewing is always finding better, and sometimes, cheaper ways of doing things. I'm thinking about making my brews just a little bit bigger in order to use that wort for my future starters. Does anyone have suggestions on how to keep this wort from becoming a breeding ground for bacteria. I recently tried this method and it got infected with pecdo (lab confirmed).

Note: I only l boiled that wort for 5 minutes

Do you have a pressure canner? That's the surefire way, and you could make a 5 gallon batch of 1.040 wort just to save as starters, and have 10-20 starters covered that way. I would think, though, that just boiling wort and transferring it to a mason jar with a fresh lid would have you covered pretty well (especially if you keep that jar in the fridge for a week then use it right away). Invert the jar of boiling wort to sanitize the lid (wearing silicone mitts!).

I do not have a pressure canner. Won't the hot wort break the glass of the Masson jars?

Naw. Mason jars are used for canning and in the process they're sterilized in boiling water.

defrandj1 said:

So, I brew about once a week. Always have beer in my fermenters. I always make a starter and I harvest the from the starter. However, all that DME is costing me more than I want. Part of what I love about brewing is always finding better, and sometimes, cheaper ways of doing things. I'm thinking about making my brews just a little bit bigger in order to use that wort for my future starters. Does anyone have suggestions on how to keep this wort from becoming a breeding ground for bacteria. I recently tried this method and it got infected with pecdo (lab confirmed).

Note: I only l boiled that wort for 5 minutes

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I don't bother boiling the wort, instead I pour it into 1L plastic milk bottles, dunk those in a water bath until they're cool, and then stick them in the freezer. When it's time to make a starter, I just defrost a milk bottle in the microwave (around 6mins on high) and then boil in the flask (with nutrients) as usual. Cool, and then pitch yeast.

Also - I don't make extra wort. Instead, after having done my normal batch sparge, I heat up another 1-2L of water and add it to my mash tun. I leave that to drain for a while, tilting the mash tun to get the liquid out of the dead space. That's what goes into the milk bottles. It's usually around 1.040

I do the same as eddiewould. Ive always got a gallon or two in the freezer. I used to boil it down to almost a syrup and then dilute and boil for the starter. But I realized it was a waste of time and ive got a large chest freezer. I now use starter beer for slug traps in the garden as well.

What if I take the wort right from the mash tun and make the starter that day. Would that lessen the risk of contamination? How long should I boil it to ensure its sanitized?

defrandj1 said:

What if I take the wort right from the mash tun and make the starter that day. Would that lessen the risk of contamination? How long should I boil it to ensure its sanitized?

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No. Boiling sanatizer the wort. This eliminates contamination. Without boiling you can have lactobacillus in your wort grow along with other bacteria. Just boil you wort as usual, make the batch larger and store the wort post boil/fermentation fill up. You can dilute 1.050 wort easily for a starter.


To me paying a couple bucks for DME ago make a couple 1L starters isn't too much. Toupppyou could also buy extra grain and make wort from that.

What I meant was once the kettle is full, and before hop additions, take 2L of wort and

Boil it separately to make the starter. I always have about 3-4 L of wort left in my mash tun anyway. DME gets expensive when you buy it as often as I need it. I figure that this is a more cost effective way to make a starter.

i try to get in the habit of:
1) while boiling, leave the mash tun open and collect the drops over the course of an hour or two
2) when transferring finished wort to the fermenter, filter the trub in a paint strainer or hop sock and let that drip-dry into the same vessel you collected from the mash tun.

the resulting ~1 liter can be boiled to sanitize, and then poured into a giant glass pickle jar.*

if it's freshly boiled (and you take care not to shatter the glass from heat shock) it should not only sanitize, but the pop-top lid should get sucked in as the heat cools and creates a suction inside. that gives it indefinite shelf life in the cupboard/basement. sometimes i add this to the next batch of wort, sometimes i use it as a starter.

* my local deli throws out 3 or 4 of these every week on trash/recycling day