Yeast Starter for Lager

Hey Everyone,

I'm doing a starter for my first lager. I know that this has to be a much bigger starter than I would need for any form of ale I've done before. A friend has told me to do a 1-1.5L starter, cold crash, decant and add another 1-1.5L of wort to the flask. This is what I am doing.

I pitched yeast in the yeast in the starter on Tuesday night, and had the starter in my fermentation chamber at around 55F. Thursday morning, I started the cold crash, and plan on adding new wort this afternoon.

My question is about the decanting of the starter. Should I autosiphon, or can I simply pour the spent wort off of the yeast?

Thanks.

Just pour it off.

Keep in mind you might be pouring out some good yeast with a cold-crash that short on lager yeast. I like to give it a good 2+ days of cold crashing because it takes longer for lager yeast to settle out. In general, when I did stepped-up lager yeast starters (I use W-34/70 pretty exclusively now), I would start the starter a good week to 10 days in advance to allow for all the cold-crashing and steps-up.

Thanks MM. That's something I was afraid of. While I planned on the stepped-up starter, I gave it an ale-yeast timeframe unfortunately. I didn't plan for the lager yeast timeframe.

So do you think it would be a good idea to bring this back up to temp (55F), leave it for another 2 days. Cold crash for 2-3 days, then do the step up Tuesday or Wednesday of next week? I would brew this batch next Saturday then.

The alternative is to do the step up today, and brew on Sunday.

In my opinion you will get better results if you make your starters at room temperature. Since you're decanting anyways it doesn't really matter what the starter wort tastes like.

Edit: And I would continue with your scheduled timeline, its not ideal but you should be fine, what gravity lager are you planning to do and which yeast are you using?

JoMarky said:

In my opinion you will get better results if you make your starters at room temperature. Since you're decanting anyways it doesn't really matter what the starter wort tastes like.

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Agreed, keeping with the original 3 litres of wort, I'd start at room temperature with one litre, go 24 hours, add two more litres, go 24 more hours, then refrigerate for two days. The night before, decant off most of the spent wort and bring the temp up to pitching temps of 50-55 degrees. Use a keeper magnet to manipulate the stir bar and scrape all the yeast off the bottom as you pitch.