How long can Yeast Starter go

Hello ladies and gents,

Sorry, I couldn't find the answer to this on search even though I know it's probably located someplace, but I made my first yeast starter Saturday for an upcoming Surly clone beer. It has yeast cake at the bottom so I think it's ok. The question is since my brew day has been moved to Friday, how do I keep the yeast growing/alive/good to pitch on Friday since it will almost have been a week since I first started.

Apologies again for my search inadeqaucies and thank you for any help in hopefully making a Surly Furious 1/2 as good as the original (and I'd be happy).

Thanks!

I would throw it in the fridge until Thursday, then pull it out and let it warm back up to room temp. The yeast should have all flocculated in the fridge, so you can pour off the liquid. Make a small volume of starter wort Friday morning and toss that in there just to get the yeast woken back up.

discnjh said:

I would throw it in the fridge until Thursday, then pull it out and let it warm back up to room temp. The yeast should have all flocculated in the fridge, so you can pour off the liquid. Make a small volume of starter wort Friday morning and toss that in there just to get the yeast woken back up.

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+1 This is what I do with all my starters. I let them ferment out completely, pop them in the fridge and decant the liquid. I just prefer to keep the extra liquid out of my brew. I usually just toss in the slurry without adding any additional wort, but it's fine if you do. The yeast will go dormant but stay alive for quite a while. I wash yeast and keep it in the fridge for several months if I need to. Just whip up some wort and dump the yeast back in to get it going again.

This happened to me this weekend. I usually do my starters so I can pitch at high krausen ( about 18 hours ). So I did a starter on Saturday but Sunday didn't work out for brewing. I let it go 36 hours to finish out then stuck it in the fridge this morning to use next weekend.

Shoot, 36 hours and no bubbles yet! I'm headed to the big city, should I buy some liquid yeast to repitch, use the dry yeast I have, or none of the above? Thoughts?

Thanks again

sweetmusicj said:

Shoot, 36 hours and no bubbles yet! I'm headed to the big city, should I buy some liquid yeast to repitch, use the dry yeast I have, or none of the above? Thoughts?

Thanks again

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For the sake of clarity... you're now talking about your main fermentation? What steps have you taken with the starter between your original post and now?

Main Fermentation, basically I made my starter yeast, but in fridge after a couple days, took it out and let it warm back up for 24 hours than pitched it 36 hours ago. No bubbles yet and I need to decide if I want to repitch or not since I'm heading to the homebrew store today and it's a loooong drive.

Lots of things can affect how quickly the yeast get to doing their thing. And just because you don't see bubbles doesn't mean they're not doing something. I always keep a couple packets of dry yeast in the fridge for "just in case" situations, but I wouldn't repitch after 36 hours. I mean, you can, but I would probably wait it out a bit.

sweetmusicj said:

Main Fermentation, basically I made my starter yeast, but in fridge after a couple days, took it out and let it warm back up for 24 hours than pitched it 36 hours ago. No bubbles yet and I need to decide if I want to repitch or not since I'm heading to the homebrew store today and it's a loooong drive.

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Just wait it out. Fermentation can take longer than 36 hours. I would wait another 12-18 hours before you panicked.

Recently had a WL cream ale yeast stall in my wort for 48hrs while I was gone came back raised the temp from 66-69 swirled it and a few hours later had small krausen hadn't looked back since. I'm actually shocked by that myself! Don't know the long term damage but I'll let ya know in a month.

Since I brew 15 to 20 gallon batches, I always have to let my starters fully ferment and then put them in the fridge. This is because I have to make 7 liter or so starters and I definatly want to decant that liquid before pitching. I just take it out of the fridge on brew day, decant, and pitch.

Also check out the stats for the yeast. I used 1214 (or 1412, can't remember - Belgian Ale) recently and was dismayed at how long it took to get going, but it's a notorious slow starter.