i need help

[simcoe26]

I am brewing a imperial stout 1.099 tomorrow (has to happen tomorrow) and I am making my yeast starter tonight. Would you recommend pitchng the whole 1gallon starter. Or crashing a couple hours before the stout is ready. If pitching the whole thing won't it affect my stout adversely ( flavor wise)

 

[Pie_Man]

For a five gallon batch, or less, a one gallon starter is a lot to pitch. I would crash cool the starter.

If you're not able to change your brew day, you may want to think about delaying your yeast pitch, if possible. I typically cool my lager wort overnight and pitch the next morning. If your sanitization procedure is sound, your wort should be fine the next morning. Good luck.

 

[simcoe26]

I don't really have anywhere to keep the wort cold

 

[Pie_Man]

Colder is better from a sanitization perspective.

I would probably crash cool as best you can, decant some of the start wort, and pitch the rest. A one gallon starter needs time to properly crash cool and flocculate. Visually if the starter wort is cloudy, there's still yeast in suspension. You'll have to make a judgement call.

Alternatively, you can pitch the entire starter volume. As I stated earlier, one gallon of spent starter wort is a little much for me, so I would avoid adding that to my beer. If I make my starter far enough in advance, I tend to decant the majority of the starter wort. Starter wort isn't supposed to taste good, so I try to add as little as possible to my beer. For me, it's just less junk, less variables, in my finished beer. Sometimes you do whatcha gotta do.

 

[simcoe26]

So if I let the fermenter come to high krausen 18 hrs and then chill it down for 3 hours and decant most of the liquid will there be enough yeast to ferment the 1090 stout

 

[worksnorth]

Pie_man is right in what he's saying, however, pitching the gallon will be ok. If it's stressing you out and you can't crash the starter... pitch it all. It will be fine
Cheers

 

[Pie_Man]

So if I let the fermenter come to high krausen 18 hrs and then chill it down for 3 hours and decant most of the liquid will there be enough yeast to ferment the 1090 stout

If you cold crash the starter properly, you won't lose yeast, at least not a significant amount. The idea behind chilling the starter is to get the yeast to settle to the bottom of the vessel allowing for the liquid to be easily decanted. Then, leaving a small of liquid, you shake the thing up get the yeast into suspension and pitch. Chilling a gallon starter for three hours following the starter's high krausen period is not long enough to accomplish this.

In your situation, pitching the entire starter is probably your best bet. Your beer will be fine.

 

[simcoe26]

So to update I am now brewing tomorrow. So the starter has been going for 18 hours. I figured I would put it in the fridge tonight and cold crash for about 18 hrs is that enough time to crash

 

[kh54s10]

18 hours should do a pretty good job in cold crashing the starter. How are you agitating this starter. If just occasional shaking I would want to give it a longer ferment, 2-3 days but 18 hours is better than nothing.

I would fine tune your process for your next brew day. If you don't have a stirplate start the starter sooner. Like I said 2-3 days then another 24 + hours to cold crash.

Check out mrmalty.com and yeastcalc.com for information on starter sizes and timing.

 

[simcoe26]

So the beer has a starting gravity of 1.100 and started fermenting in 8 hrs. Hopefully it has enough life to get it down to at least 1.032