Starter forming over for a day

Hello all, I made a starter for a Barleywire I plan on brewing. The starter has been foaming over for a day and ran all over the counter. Did I lose all my yeast? You guys think it is still ok to use?

It's fine. Get a clean wet paper towel and wipe it. If you take it off the stir plate, it might calm down.

This is the exact reason why I place my stir plate in a gallon ziplock.

badbrew said:

This is the exact reason why I place my stir plate in a gallon ziplock.

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^That's a good idea. As is the damp paper towel and a li'l RDWing.... OP, your starter's fine, but you may want to take it off the plate 'til it settles down a bit.

I had that problem quite a bit before I up graded my flask. I did an experiment where I caught the excess yeast, I probably lost about 20% of my yeast. The problem with Ales is as they are top fermenting the yeast ends up in the krausen. Hence the practice of harvesting healthy yeast from krausens of a brew.

Clem

Thanks for the info. Good thing I sealed the new counter tile. The wife would be a little mad if I stained the new grout. She is already a little bent that decided to brew and not finish the back splash this weekend.

Wow 20%. I have an extra vile of yeast should I add it to the wort with the starter to be safe? First barley wine I don’t want it to come out low on alcohol

I just use fermcap when making the starter wort. No foam over issues then.

What is the expected OG? how long until you brew. Last time I did a strong beer, the intended OG was going to be 1.080, it went 1.094 due to better efficiency (I thought higher strength would lead me to loose out on efficiency, it did but not as much as expected). To compensate for this, I took the dreggs of the starter and saved a small amount of wort (.5L then diluted it 3:1) and threw this on the stir plate for 18hrs and crashed it for 8 hrs and pitched when I added a second lot of O2 at the 24hr mark. That IIPA went high order (read big bang) for about 48hrs and finished off 95% of the fermenting in 72hrs FG was 1.014 (I stepped mashed to get really fermentable wort) fermentation temp profile started at 60F ramped to 6F5 held there until if blew off and then I tried cooling to down to slow fermentation but my cooling could hardly keep up with the heat put off by the brew.

If you have time you can crash cool, decant and then save that yeast in a sanatized jar and do the same process above with the dreggs of the starter accept with starter wort instead of diluted wort from the batch. There is always different ways to skin a cat.

Clem