First time making a yeast starter

[Patch62383]

I am going to brew an Irish red beer and decided to do a yeast starter with my white labs liquid yeast. I got a set of instructions from my home brew shop that I shop at and it says to use 2 cups of water and 1/2 cup of dme and boil for ten mins cool down to room temperature and pitch the yeast in a sanitized vessel. Anyways my concern is everything I am reading on the internet says to use 2 pints of water and 1/2 of dme when making the starter. I am probably over thinking this but I couldn't imagine the water amount would make that much difference because the yeast will only consume the sugars available. I trust my home brew shop they've been around for 24 years and are top notch or maybe I don't if I am posting this. Anyways any thoughts? another question is do I need to chill and pour off the beer in the starter before pitching it into my wort I couldn't image it would make that big of a difference.

 

[freisste]

First, get a cheap digital scale. It will likely be able to switch between oz and grams. Do metric. 10:1 ratio. Each liter gets 100g of DME.

Second, you don't have to decant as there is a relatively small amount of liquid to add to your brew. But the extra liquid won't really help either. If you've got time to cold crash it, do it. If not, no worries.

 

[thrashandburn]

I use about a liter of water to 1/2 a cup of dme. According to beersmith that's around 1.040 wort which is where you want it to be. It has a lot of sugar to keep the yeast busy but not too many to stress them out.

when you go to pitch, it is acceptable to just dump the whole starter in. I've done it multiple times with no ill effect. However, many people prefer to cold crash the starter overnight and decant most of the starter wort leaving behind just enough to swirl the yeast up and pour into your wort.

I don't think one method is better than another but that's just my opinion.