Conflicting instructions for making a yeast starter

I don't think I have ever gotten involved in something where there are so many contradictory opinions on how to do things! I have already run into this regarding how much water to use for a mini-mash: kit instructions vs. Palmer in "How to Brew" and DeathBrewer, and others on this forum.

Now I have questions regarding how to make a yeast starter. And I'm not even going to ask about whether a starter is needed, or how much to make, or whether to add it when it's most active or after it settles out - it seems that each of those questions is a can of worms in its own right. I just want to ask about the best way to make one.

First, it seems that a generally accepted figure for points/pound/gallon (ppg) of DME is around 42 (Palmer in "How to Brew" lists 1.040-1.043 S.G.; i.e. ppg = 40 to 43 on page 35 of his book and uses 42 on page 183; Papazian in Appendix 11 of "The Complete Joy of Homwbrewing" says 1 lb/gallon gives a O.G. of 1.042-1.046), so I will assume 42 ppg.

Palmer, in his instructions for making a starter on page 73 says to boil a pint of water and stir in 1/2 cup of DME to produce a starter of about 1.040 OG. Well, I just weighed a 1/2 cup of DME and assuming my scale is accurate, it's just about 3 ounces. So it seems to me that 3 ounces or 0.188 pounds times 42 and divided by 1/8 gallon would give an O.G. of 1.063 ! Is there something I don't understand about how to calculate this? Also, some instructions in the yeast starter FAQ in this forum also call for approximately this concentration: 1 cup/quart (Rhoobarb), or somewhat weaker but still stronger than 1.040; e.g., 1 cup/1300 ml = 1 cup/1.38 quart (DeRoux's Broux).

A different concentration is called for in "Fourteen Essential Questions About Yeast Starters" at mrmalty.com.
Fourteen Essential Questions About Yeast Starters
This calls for 6 ounces DME in 2 quarts of water, which I calculate to be about 1 cup/2 quarts, or 1/4 cup/pint - half of what Palmer recommends. This is supposed to give a gravity between 1.030 and 1.040, and using 42 ppg does indeed come to an O.G. of 1.032 if I understand how to calculate it.

Well, I'm sorry for the long post, but the more I study this stuff, the more confused I get. I'd be interested to know what others here use, but somehow I have a feeling that there will be many different methods, amounts, etc.

You're over complicating it by worrying about the og of your starter...take Palmer's (or anyone's) amount of water to extract, boil it, cool it, and pitch yeast....

Don't worry about anything else about it...The yeasties will eat and reproduce and that's all that matters starting out...

I personally use Palmer's ratio of 1 pint per half cup of extract...not that there's anything wrong with any other ratio...they all will make a starter and they all will make beer...and that's all that matters.

If everyone brewed beer exactly the same way, things would get really boring fast. Much in brewing is a compromise, and different people have different preferences and opinions about what will produce the perfect beer.

When I make starters, I usually make them between 2 and 4 quarts using a gravity of about 1.030-1.035, and I lightly hop them for no good reason other than that I like to taste the starter beer to get a feeling for how the health of the yeast. Unhopped starters tend to taste tart or sour and make that evaluation more difficult. I never measure out ingredients by volume (other than water, obviously).

I use about six ounces of DME for a 2-qt starter and 12 for a 1-gallon starter.

Here's why I'm worrying (not really) about the O.G. of the starter:

Palmer, p75: "...the composition of the starter wort and the main wort must be very similar if the starter is pitched at or near peak activity. Why? Because the yeast in the starter wort have produced a specific set of enzymes for that wort's sugar profile. If those yeast are then pitched to a different wort, with a different relative percentage of sugars, the yeast will be impaired and the fermentation may be affected...."

Fourteen Essential Questions About Yeast Starters: "When making starter wort, keep the starting gravity between 1.030 and 1.040 (7-10P). You do not want to make a high gravity starter to grow yeast."

I'm not worried, and I am going to have a home brew, but I'm still confused.

Both are correct. You want to make a starter that has similar sugar ratios to the beer you will be brewing, but you also don't want the yeast to be stressed by excessive ethanol production (which is poisonous to it) in the starter. So ideally, you'll want your starter wort to be a weaker version of the beer you will be fermenting. For most beer styles, using light or amber DME does the job just fine. What you don't want to do is make a starter with glucose, dextrose, sucrose or fructose, since beer is mostly maltose.

I don't think I have ever gotten involved in something where there are so many contradictory opinions on how to do things!

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Not just opinions, but a multitude of different ways to do each and every step ... and they all work!

david_42 said:

Not just opinions, but a multitude of different ways to do each and every step ... and they all work!

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That's what I was getting at...The Op asked;

I just want to ask about the best way to make one.

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The answer is, the best way is the one that works for you...they all work, it's not a win/lose proposition....They all will make starters, and the starters will make beer.

My advice is choose one for this batch, and try another way next time..That's why some people brew SMaSHes to try different things using the same simple base ingredients...

Next time you brew a similar grav recipe try another starter method and see if it is any different...more than likely it won't be...in a normal beer, you will more than likely not notice a difference whether it is Palmer's recipe, or Deathbrewer's or Orfy's or whatever one you use...as long as they all use DME and water in some formulation, it really won't be noticeable.

It's the same with just about everything on here...it really isn't worth debating...and it's not than any one idea on here is wrong if it conflicts with another...it's all a matter of personal preference.

Hopefully this thread is still active...I'm making a hefeweissen tomorrow so I need to do a yeast starter tonight (so say the directions). However, my yeast packet (safbrew wb-06 "dry wheat beer yeast") says "sprinkle into wort". So, do I need to make a starter or not? Thanks for any help! Mike.

mahilly said:

Hopefully this thread is still active...I'm making a hefeweissen tomorrow so I need to do a yeast starter tonight (so say the directions). However, my yeast packet (safbrew wb-06 "dry wheat beer yeast") says "sprinkle into wort". So, do I need to make a starter or not? Thanks for any help! Mike.

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You don't need to make a starter for dry yeast. You can rehydrate it in some water prior to pitching if you want to wake it up, or you can pitch it straight into the wort.

I use this calculator to figure out how much DME and water to use:
Homebrew Starter Wort Calculator

To get back to the original post, I don't think there are really any contradictory opinions.
I do think that your scale is inaccurate, and that some of the measures have insufficient granularity.
I just measured 1/2 cup DME, and it weighed 2.5 oz, not 3.0.
So take Palmer's suggestions with the corrected weight.
He suggests 1/2 cup per pint. Assuming that DME produces 42 pppg, this would produce a gravity of 1.052. Admittedly, this is a little bit high, but if he went down to 1/4 cup, you would get a gravity of 1.026 which is too low. What you really need is 3/8 cup, but I've never seen a measuring spoon of that size.
Rhoobarb's recommendation is the same as Palmer's, but DeRoux's Broux's recommendation is within range.
As for mrmalty's suggestions, this is at the low end of the range if you use ounces, or towards the high end of the range if you go metric.
I weigh mY DME, but it comes out to 3/4 cup per qt or 100 g per liter, and this comes out very close to 1.040

-a.

Yeast starter methods are like A-holes... everyone's got one.. and they almost always work!!!

I just checked the kitchen scale I used to measure the 1/2 cup of DME against my extremely accurate powder measure, which is a balance scale, not spring operated. Three ounces on my kitchen scale comes out to 1362 grains on the powder scale, which at 7000 grains per pound is 3.11 ounces, so my 1/2 cup of DME actually weighed more than three ounces. I can only assume that it must have been packed down more than ajf's, though I made no effort to pack it down when weighing it.

Edit: I realized that my measuring cup could be in error, so I weighed a half cup of water on my kitchen scale - it came out about 4.25 ounces - assuming it should be 4 ounces, the cup is about 6.3 percent off. So I actually had about .53 cup of DME which weighed 3.11 ounces - if I had had 0.5 cup, it would have actually weighed (0.5)(3.11)/0.53 = 2.93 ounces.

What about using LME? I used 1/2 cup LME in a pint of water. And this was LME from the local food coop, not from my kit, although I couldn't see or taste any difference.

I'm not worried about it, just asking what the proper ratio should be with LME.

I don't know how much a cup of LME weighs, but Palmer lists LME as having 36 points per pound per gallon.

I have a starter going right now for a tripel (WLP500 yeast) that I made with Palmer's method 1/2 cup per pint. I measured the SG before pitching and it was something like 1.063 so I decided to add some more water (boiled it an extra 10 minutes after that, obviously).

It's been 24 hours and it's bubbling away happily so I wouldn't worry about it too much. I plan to let it go for 48 hours then put it in the fridge overnight before pitching the slurry. But then again I'm a newbie so YMMV.

The French have a good way to express this but unfortunately it doesn't translate well to English - "te prends pas la tete". Roughly translated, it means fuggetaboutit, or RDWHAHB

Don't forget to take the relative position of the moon into account when doing your starter. I adjust my DME accordingly up and down relative to the tides. I feel this is very important.

Just a side note, volume does not equal weight in US standard measurements.

1 cup = 8 ounces by volume
8 ounces of water does not equal 0.5 lb

Water weighs 8.35 lbs per gallon or 0.06523 pounds per fluid ounce

One cup of water by volume weighs 0.522 ounces


Now if this were metric...

I believe that should be "One cup of water by volume weighs 0.522 pounds" or 8.35 ounces. So my measuring cup is not as inaccurate as I thought, but there still seems to be quite a variation between the weights of 1/2 cup of two different DME's. I'll be weighing my starter DME and priming sugar from now on rather than depending on volume measurements.

dontman said:

Don't forget to take the relative position of the moon into account when doing your starter. I adjust my DME accordingly up and down relative to the tides. I feel this is very important.

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HA! This is definitely the best advice - keep your chakras in line!

cbw1978 said:

HA! This is definitely the best advice - keep your chakras in line!

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Oh oh. Don't get me started on chakras. That is a whole nother issue with starters.