First time making a starter - volume question

[Hellosluggo]

I'll be making my first starter this week using my just-completed homemade stir plate and a 1000 mL Erlenmeyer flask, and I have a question regarding what volume to shoot for. Be gentle, now!

The recommended water/DME ratio I've found is 2 cups water to 1 cup DME (from the BeerGeekNation video here <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMhFerNTwbQ&feature=plcp>), yielding around 473 mL... If I'm using one package of Wyeast 2112, is there any reason I should or shouldn't double the volume of water/DME to get closer to a full 1000 mL starter?

 

[eclipseti3]

I just made my first this past weekend. Ive read 100grams DME/1L ratio with 1/4 yeast nutrients (if you have some) This should create a 1.030 OG starter. (recommend by most)

If you're asking about yeast/wort ratio you should check out the free calculator at MrMalty.com

Hope this helps?

 

[makomachine]

I just made my first this past weekend. Ive read 100grams DME/1L ratio with 1/4 yeast nutrients (if you have some) This should create a 1.030 OG starter. (recommend by most)

If you're asking about yeast/wort ratio you should check out the free calculator at MrMalty.com

Hope this helps?

Believe you meant 1/4 teaspoon - didn't want someone interpreting that as a 1/4 anything else! You nailed it - love the 100 grams to liter ratio as its really easy to scale!

 

[Sulli]

1 cup DME to 2 cups water will give you much too high a gravity for a starter.

Use the 100g DME per 1 liter water ratio and you will be fine.

If you don't have a scale 100g DME is about 3/4 of a cup of DME.

So, 4 1/4 cups of water (1 liter) mixed with 3/4 cup DME (100g) will give you a starter with a gravity of around 1.037.

Just be careful when bringing it to a boil, do it slowly and keep your hand on the regulator. You only need to boil it for about 1 minute to kill everything in your water.

 

[Hellosluggo]

Sounds like 100g DME to 1L of water is the way to go. Thanks, y'all!

 

[kh54s10]

Now that you have determined that 100 grams to 1 liter ratio is proper, check out mrmalty.com and yeastcalc.com to learn what size a starter is required for the gravity of the brew you are making.

The bigger the beer you are making the bigger the starter needed.

 

[Hellosluggo]

And away we go!

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/video/stir-plate-maiden-voyage-570.html

 

[Sulli]

I see your prepared for blow off, nicely done. Hopefully not needed.

 

[Hellosluggo]

Oh, and by the way, I apparently sausage-fingerly screwed this thread from the get go... The video I quoted in the first post actually recommends 2 cups water to 1/2 cup DME, NOT 1 cup DME.

Still, since then, I've found the 100g DME/1L of water ratio in other places as well, so that's what I went with.

For the sake of discussion, I'm still curious what you guys might have to say about 2 cups water to 1/2 cup DME.

In reference to my original question about doubling the volume, it doesn't seem like .25 cup more DME and .25 cup less water would make that huge of a difference from using 100g DME/1L water—or would it?

@Sulli Yeah, I didn't want to awake this morning to a krausen-covered counter and sticky-sweet stir plate... So I sat it all down in a 13x9 glass dish and put a piece of plastic wrap over the stir plate. I found that I needed about a quarter inch of space between the stir plate and the flask to optimize the magnetic pull, so the knitted doily thing is there for that purpose. Looks a little overdone, but hey, it's working!

 

[Sulli]

The knitted doily thingy probably dampens some of the noise, as well as looking very stylish.