Help me with a Starter "issue"

[MDVDuber]

Hey, second attempt to make a starter. Doesn't seem to be working this time either.

Ok - My process:

1) Warm yeast to room temp
2) while doing so, dissolve DME in water and bring to a boil. 1/2 Cup DME to 1 Cup water
3) Cool to 72ish and pitch yeast from sterilised container. Stick it on Stir plate and wait

- I have a stir plate
- I sterilise everything in One Step - no rinse.
- I think I have good sanitary procedures - 2 years of active brewing with dry yeasts and never a shot batch.
- First batch of yeast was Mail order and when it arrived it was incredibly hot - 90's, but a smack pack in same shipment was fine.
- Second batch of yeast was purchased from LHBS fridge, stuck in a cooler with reuseable ice packs and driven straight home (30 mins) and stuck in the fridge.

So first try was a few months ago. House was warm, so in the 70's used WLP099 Super High Gravity Yeast. Pitched into wort and went to bed. Woke up and nothing. hmm maybe I missed the krausen. Add some more wort....2 days and finally production of bubbles and some obvious fermentation - except ack! SOUR.

Second try this weekend. Same deal, Yeast this time was WLP550 Belgian ale Yeast. No Krausen, add more wort - warm it up a bit - 69 degrees is warm right now, Still no Krausen and not much in the way of bubbles. Not sour yet.

What am I doing wrong?

 

[Revvy]

I'm going to say that you dummped your first starter, and are worried about this one for very faulty reasons.

First, it is perfectly commmon for the "beer" in a starter to go sour after a few days or even hours. There's no hops in it after all. But that doesn't mean the yeast is sour, or bad...just that the beer on top is. And the tiny bit won't affect the flavor of 5 gallons of beer if you chose to pitch it in, though most folks decant that liquid any way, and just dump in the yeast.

Many folks, especially in summer add a hop pellet or two when boiling the dme, since hops are a preservative...But that is really optional.

Secondly, I've rarely ever seen a krausen on any of my starters actually, maybe 3-4 out of hundreds.

Here's some basic info on starters and what to look for.

It doesn't matter one blip in your fermenter or your starter flask if the airlock bubbles or not (if you are using an airlock and not tinfoil if you are using tinfoil, you aren't getting bibbling anyway,) or if you see a krauzen. In fact starter fermentation are some of the fastest or slowest but most importantly, the most boring fermentations out there. Usually it's done withing a few hours of yeast pitch...usually overnight when we are sleeping, and the starter looks like nothing ever happened...except for the little band at the bottom. Or it can take awhile...but either way there's often no "activity" whatsoever....

I usually run my stirplate for the first 24 hours, then shut it down, if you are spinning your starter it is really hard to get a krausen to form anyway, since it's all spinning, and there's often a head of foam on it from the movement.


All that really matters is that creamy band o yeast at the bottom.

This is a chilled sample so it's flocculated, but even with an unchilled sample you should see a band of yeast at the bottom. Here's an unchilled version

Same thing, a band.

As it is I've only ever seen two or three krausens actually on my starter (one blew off a bunch of krausen and knocked the tinfoil off the flask,) and the evidence of one on the flask at the "waterline" once. But I've never not had a starter take off.

Look for the yeast at the bottom, don't worry what it looks like on top.

If you have yeast on the bottom....that's all you really need.

If it looks anything like that, your are ready to either feed it again, or use it.

So the only thing you are doing wrong, is assuming that just becasue your starter beer was sour, or that you are not seeing much "activity" that anyhting is wrong at all.

 

[MDVDuber]

Thank you!

 

[jldc]

Shorter version of what Revvy said:

You usually won't see krausen (although I usually see a color change to a more white or more milky color). If you sanitized ok and there are any viable yeasties is your pack, you're probably going to be ok.

L

 

[MDVDuber]

Thanks folks - I brewed yesterday and pitched the starter that I had made. This morning the airlock is bubbling away happily.

I was about ready to abandon liquid yeasts - but your advise let me see how easy it really is....

Thanks again!

 

[MDVDuber]

Well, apparently the starter was good..... When I got home today the fermenter had blow the lid off and spread Krausen all over the "fermentation" room. SWMBO is pretty cool about my hobbies so she just laughed and my 4 year old said "Daddy look at the mess on the door!". Blow off hose feeding to a 1 gallon jug in place.....

 

[Revvy]

Well, apparently the starter was good..... When I got home today the fermenter had blow the lid off and spread Krausen all over the "fermentation" room. SWMBO is pretty cool about my hobbies so she just laughed and my 4 year old said "Daddy look at the mess on the door!". Blow off hose feeding to a 1 gallon jug in place.....

Pics or it didn't happen.

So how big was the krausen blast radius?

How far was the lids?

I had a three foot lid toss recently.

 

[MDVDuber]

Ok, This would be the Daddy What DID you do?!?! shot.... Which was after I had secured the area - read "saved the beer". The lid landed next to the fermenter - but the spatter reached over my head height (6 plus feet) on the wall next to the hinge side of the door.

 

[jjones17]

Hahaha great pics. To add to the affirmation of starter beer tasting horrible, I have actually killed an entire batch by pitching a London ESB 2L starter onto a 12L batch - the starter beer was horribly oxidized and phenolic because of intermittent shaking during its ferment.

I know this was the cause, as my most recent starter was Munich Lager yeast using same methods. This time I decanted the yeast before pitching, but I tasted the liquid I decanted - tasted EXACTLY the same and just as terrible as the finished ESB beer. I recently bottled this batch and it tasted WONDERFUL.

Not saying everyone has to decant, because others have had normal beers using the starter liquid. Just my experience....

 

[BigTexun]

while doing so, dissolve DME in water and bring to a boil. 1/2 Cup DME to 1 Cup water

I thought you were supposed to use 1/2 cup DME with a liter of water (not a cup). ?

 

[MDVDuber]

I definitely dumped the sour stuff.

As to the ratio - yeah, I think I got my wires crossed between all the different rates I've seen on the web. Anyhow it worked, but I'll adjust my ratio next time.