washed yeast / starter question

I tried my hand at yeast washing for the first time last night (thanks for the wiki) but I plan on brewing tomorrow. I guess I should have made a starter last night but I didn't. Should I make a startertonight it just pitch one of my pint jars of yeast? Thanks in advance for the help.

I would make the starter. I think you would end up seeing some serious lag time. However, if you aren't worried about it, warm it up to room temperature, use some yeast nutrients in the boil, and pitch away. I still think a starter would be warranted.

Also, you may want to use the pitching rate calculator on Mr. Malty. It has a slurry calculator that might help to see where you stand overall.

You don't have to make a starter if you have enough yeast. If My Malty says you need 150mL of yeast slurry in it current state, and that's how much you have, you can just dump it right in.

kanzimonson said:

You don't have to make a starter if you have enough yeast. If My Malty says you need 150mL of yeast slurry in it current state, and that's how much you have, you can just dump it right in.

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That would entirely depend on if he knows how much yeast he has in the slurry.

Right. Unfortunately, at the homebrew scale we just have to make some estimates. Ultimately, you'll just have to decide "that looks like a yeast slurry thickness of 4.0 with 20% non-yeast percentage." Pitch it, see how it works, and adjust the next time.

I will probably go ahead and make the starter, is 24 hours long enough for a starter without a stirplate (man I need one of those) or should I rehydrate and pitch a pack of s-04 I keep for backup? I have to brew tomorrow or I won't have time until January

24hrs should be just fine for the starter if you plan to directly pitch it without decanting.

Making a starter will never hurt. Even if it only has 5minutes (okay, that seems like a waste of energy, but you get what I'm saying).

Since it sounds like the yeast are pretty fresh, they'll probably get going quickly and 24 hours will be enough

Thanks.guys will make a starter and throw in a couple g of nutrient and just RDWHAHB

So I made a starter and pitched while the starter had a kruezen going.2 hours later I could see a krurzen starting to form. The next morning good looking fermentation going. I left town Friday and came back late last night and it looks like fermentation had stopped. Did I underpitch or is it possible that fermentation is finished that fast? OG was 1.048 was too lazy/tired last night to take a reading. Thoughts?

It's probably done, take a gravity reading to be sure.

When you typed that out, you knew what our answer would be didn't you?

Take a reading.

Yes it's possible, and pretty likely. But don't you think you're in a better position to determine if your beer is done than we are?

Yea I know, just never had one go that fast. Heck I have I began wit next to it that was brewed almost 3 weeks ago that still has a krurzen on top, so between never washing my yeast and never seeing one go that fast I am just worried I underpitched.

And for my own anal, anti-head exploding purposes, it's spelled "krausen" or slightly less commonly "kraeusen"

Thanks for the spelling lesson teach. I wouldn't want to go around.the internet spelling things wrong all the time.

Deafuhnately knot.