Wort for Starters

I have gotten all of my all-grain equipment together to brew and want to take on a small scale mash as a trial run before attempting a full brew.

My thought is to mash and brew enough wort for 2 gallons of starter wort. I will be pressure canning the resulting wort. I have plenty of 2 row but not sure on the grain bill and amount of water I will need.

Anyone have suggestions?

An OG of 1.040 is a number I hear thrown around a lot as a good OG to target for a basic starter so a grain bill to hit that wouldn't be hard to figure out.

But I prefer to make my starters with DME anyways since all I do is dump it in and boil for 10-15 minutes. No mashing or sparging and its a one pot process.

1.040 is a great gravity for a starter

I did the same thing for my first AG run. Helps you get a feel for it before you do a brew. All you need is two row for starter wort, so you're good there. About 2.5-3 lbs of base malt should give you 2 gallons of 1.035 - 1.040 gravity wort. As far as water goes, hard to give a definitive answer since everyones system is different, but I would try a grain absorbtion rate of .5 qt / lb. So plan on losing between 1.25 and 1.5 qts of wate to the grain. Do a single infusion mash on the low side 148-150 for an hour and shoot for equal runoffs from the latuer and sparge ( I assume you are doing a batch sparge). You should end up using just under 2.5 gallons of water total. So do your infusion using close to 1.3-1.4 gallons, measure your runoff and then add the amount of sparge water you need to hit 2 gallons. Mix both runoffs together throughly before you can it up.

Should I do a boil or just can the run off from the sparge?

That's a personal preference. I don't do a preboil. If you don't preboil you will have a lot of break material in the jars. I find it easy enough to decant the wort off of the break. If you don't want to hassle it, do a preboil.

I preboiled and left outside to crash cool overnight. Then siphoned off the break material. Still got plenty in the jars anyway, so it was worth the effort (or laziness, actually)

You may know this, but don't try and accelerate the cooling/depressurizing of the canner when you are done. It needs to cool slowly. If you release the pressure too quickly, the wort will boil out of the jars due to being soo hot and under less pressure.

E-Mursed said:

Should I do a boil or just can the run off from the sparge?

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No real need to pre-boil if you are getting an appropriate OG. Just make up the recipe so you can get the OG with no sparge or one sparge for the volume that you want to can.

I boil it depending on the gravity I achieve, but I mostly take extra runnings off of my grain bed from my full sized batches. These are usually lower than what I want, so boiling will concentrate the wort. I boil (or dilute some of) the wort to 1.020 and then boil the rest to 1.040 with a calculation on about how long that will be. I can the 1.020 in pints for starting small amount of tired yeast, as with bottle conditioned or in the future my frozen yeast bank. Then step-up to the 1.040 as need, or start with the 1.040 if you have good/healthy yeast.

The recipe will take some math and a few tries to get it right...but it's easy once you get the process. I do mine during brew day, then the canner sits overnight to cool. I usually do 7 quarts and 7 pints, stacked, at the same time at 15 psi for 45 minutes. Stick 'em on the basement shelf until needed.

Best regards,

I took extra runnings off three batches from Sunday. Had to boil a bit down to get 1.040 for the quarts, but it was almost at 1.020 for the pints/half-pints.

Should last a little while, but I split it up between brew pals.


Making it from first or second runnings would be easier, but these were essentially free + some time and lids.

Thanks for posting.

I have been too busy with studying for nursing boards to do much beer wise, but should get a chance after I test in two weeks.

I will post my results when I do get my set up running.

i just want to chime in for those without canner's and say that I have had good success freezing my extra wort. I freeze it in containers that hold enough for each starter and then I thaw and boil it before pitching my yeast.

Saves me time and money versus DME