Did I screw up my yeast starter?

Brew day is Saturday so today I made my yeast starter. I forgot one pretty important step, which was to take the yeast packet out of the fridge 3 hours beforehand to bring it to room temp.

I took it out of the fridge, smacked it, put the pack in the sanitizing solution, boiled & cooled the wort, and then pitched the yeast. It ended up being out for about an hour (possibly a bit more) before I pitched it.

It's now about 4 hours after I made the starter and I don't see much happening, except that the plastic wrap cover is starting to bulge slightly (perhaps a sign of fermentation activity?). I could post a pic if that would help.

It's not ideal to pitch it into wort that's not at the same temperature as the yeast, but it should be okay.

When will I know if it's not working, and what signs should I look for? Reason I ask is that I will need to make another starter tomorrow if this one doesn't work out.

A lot of times you won't see too much in the way of visible fermentation with a starter.

Take a gravity reading to know for sure if it's fermenting.

Also, you need to let oxygen in, so if the plastic wrap is tight, take it off and put a piece of sanitized aluminum foil on instead. And give the starter a good swirl whenever you can.

From a smack pack, you will see bubbling within 24 hours. The starter will go from brown to creamy (like when you add cream to coffee) when the yeast start really reproducing. Around 36 hrs, you will see a krausen form that indicates the yeast is at it's apogee. That's a good time to pitch.

It will work fine. You'd be amazed at the resiliency of yeast. All of my yeast is FROZEN in tubes that I prepared. They take 36-48 hrs to show any signs of life.

Rick500 said:

A lot of times you won't see too much in the way of visible fermentation with a starter.

Click to expand...

+1

Don't expect a huge krausen on top. If you're not using a stir bar or manually stirring it often, you should see a little yeast accumulation on the bottom of the flask even in 30-60 min...

What you did is just delay the point at which the yeast starts to reproduce by a couple hours. No problem.
If your starters are like most of mine, you won't have very much indication of fermentation (krausen etc), but you will notice that the starter gets more cloudy because of the increased yeast cell count.
If you don't have a stir plate, you can give the starter a swirl as often as you want. Once the yeast has started reproducing, this releases some CO2, and causes a bit of foaming.

-a.

What part of the starter do I pitch? Ive been told I dont want to pitch everything, just the yeast stuff.

If you don't have a stir plate, shake it as often as possible.

Stir plates are easy to build. I'd look into doing that if you want to continue making starters.

You can either pitch the whole thing or let it settle and decant off most of the liquid and pitch the slurry.

I pitch the whole thing most of the time.

pitch the whole thing...

So here's the starter after 3.5 days. Brew day is today. Does it look like it turned out? I guess I was expecting a thicker yeast cake at the bottom. The proportions were 270g of DME and 2.7 liters of water.

Looks fine. That's much more yeast on the bottom than you started with, and there's more suspended in the liquid.
If you have time, I'd put it in the fridge for an hour or so to try and settle some of the yeast, and pour off some of the liquid before pitching. 2.7 liters of starter is a lot to pitch into 5g, and probably won't taste too good. If you're doing a 10g batch, I'd pitch the whole thing.

-a.

Actually it was in the fridge overnight, and I just took it out prior to taking the pic. That's as settled as it will get. I do plan to decant the wort and just pitch the slurry. I made a large starter because it's a pretty big beer (1.067). I used Mr. Malty's pitch rate calc to get the proportions.