Did I waste a starter?

[Formito]

Hello all, so some background info: on Sunday I made a Belgian Tripel, OG 1.083, and am using WL Abbey ale yeast(temp range 66-72F) for which I made a starter. After 24 hours, my fermentation became moderately active so I am not too worried about the progress. My question is actually about the original starter that I made.

48 hours before brew day I made a 1L starter, pitched the vial(recently dated, not old) while it was slightly warm, then left it on my stir plate to do it's thing. My ambient house temperature is ~60-62F, possibly closer to 58F near the window where I left the starter. Over that 48h I saw no real starter activity(foaming, residue, etc) and was worried about pitching dead yeast but all my local brew shops are closed Sunday/Monday so I had to make due.

So did I actually make a starter for this or did I just leave my yeast in inactive suspension for 2 days?

 

[stratslinger]

Sounds like you made a starter...

Is this the first one you've made on a stir plate? I've read reports here that stir plates, at least for some yeast strains, reduce or eliminate the formation of a krausen, since the surface is pretty much always agitated by the vortexc the stir plate forms.

Did you crash cool and decant the starter? If so, was there a somewhat thick yeast cake in your starter vessel? That'd be a really good sign that the starter behaved exactly how you'd want it to.

 

[kh54s10]

That temperature is not cold enough to cause the yeast any harm. It might have slowed them some though.

On a stirplate you will often get no krausen. Also all the signs activity may finish overnight and you just miss seeing it.

Did you let the yeast settle before pitching?

If you did and you had more than a very thin layer of yeast on the bottom you did increase the cell count.

At the very worse, you have still underpitched.

Your yeast are fine and will give you a very good beer.

 

[Formito]

Ok, I was concerned because even with other starters on the stirplate I got a small krausen but there was nothing with this one. After 48h I let it rest and decanted and there was maybe 1/4in of sediment on the bottom so it seemed too close to tell for certain.

 

[Formito]

Actually, while this is active I have another question. If I recover and wash this yeast after primary, can it be reused for future batches? Or will the strain be too much?

 

[NordeastBrewer77]

Actually, while this is active I have another question. If I recover and wash this yeast after primary, can it be reused for future batches? Or will the strain be too much?

yeah, you can always re-use yeast. check out the yeast washing sticky on this forum.
don't worry about the starter, sometimes they're not very active at all. i have two sitting side by side right now, ones pretty active and foams violently when swirled, the other hardly looks like anything's going on and when i swirl it, only a little foam rises up.