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Budista

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Hey all;

Just posted a topic in Recipes/Ingredients I'm not sure should be there. Since it's mostly questions about the recipe, I'll link it here before I ask about starters.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f12/high-gravity-baltic-porter-minor-variations-183996/

My question is about starters. I've ordered one vial of Wyeast 1084 Irish Ale yeast for this particular brew, but seeing as it has such a high OG I want to make a starter.

From what I'm hearing, I'm planning on beginning the starter on Friday evening (when I get the yeast) using the following recipe:

0.5 cup Amber DME and 0.5 cup of Pale LME to 2L filtered boiling water. Half of the resulting wort on Friday evening, the rest on Saturday evening (for a Sunday evening brew day) with plenty of shaking in between. I'm using both Pale and LME because I have odd quantities of each leftover from previous batches that I'd like to use ASAP, as well as letting the yeast grow in a similar environment to the posted recipe.

Does this sound like it will give me enough of a starter to avoid the dreaded 1.030 stall? The ingredients have been a bit pricier than expected, so I would hate to waste nearly 4 months on a beer that is undrinkable. I plan on decanting off the starter wort, similar though it may be, then adding our cooled actual wort a bit at a time to the slurry to equalize the temperatures before pitching.

The author of the recipe also mentions he added 0.5 gallons of filtered water to his primary after pitching to bring the OG down just a bit to help the yeast out. Is this necessary, all things considered?

In regards to the recipe itself, there's no mention of Irish Moss. Am I going to harm anything by adding some 15 min before the boil is done? How much would normally be good?

Thanks in advance,

- Budista
 
Well, I'm not up on my volume to weight conversions, but I always do 4 ounces of DME per liter of water, which gets me right in the ballpark. If a half cup of DME weighs roughly 4 oz then I'd say you're on track. Although I don't mix any darker extract into my starters and just use all pale.

And Wyeast 1084 tolerates up to 10% ABV so you should be fine unless you expect your beer to be higher than that, but it shouldn't be given the recipe.

And you won't harm anything by adding irish moss, but in a porter you probably wouldn't notice if you used it or not since all that does is help the beer clear up a bit. But if you want to add some, then do so in the last 15 minutes and only add a pinch, or like a teaspoon. That's all you need for a 5 gallon batch.
 
We just brewed yesterday, and aside from a bit more break material getting into the primary than we would really have preferred, it went well.

A question I have is that, since we ended up with an OG of about 1.083 (Which is right where we wanted it), I'm a bit concerned about the attenuation of the Wyest 1084 Irish Ale yeast we used. Our target FG is around the 1.020-1.010 range; we'll be happy with anything in that range.

When it came in to the LHBS, we put it into a 1 litre 1.065OG starter for about 3-4 days before decanting about 1/2 of that off and pitching the remainder alongside the cake (after chilling it overnight to flocculate some out). We made a point to aerate as well as possible without actively bubbling oxygen through the wort, but I'm wondering if it's worth ordering some Servomyces tablets and tossing those into the wort 4 or 5 days into fermentation.

Either way, it'll be at least 2-3 weeks before we rack into secondary and another 2-3 before we bottle. I'm just dreading a stuck fermentation; 3 months is a while to wait for a failed beer.

Any tips or suggestions?
 
I'm wondering if it's worth ordering some Servomyces tablets and tossing those into the wort 4 or 5 days into fermentation.

There would really be no point in adding nutrients at this point. After a day, the growth phase will be nearly finished, if it hasn't already. Yeast nutrient would almost always be added in the boil.
 
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