Remix a cold-crashed yeast starter on a stir plate?

[J2W2]

Hi,

I cold-crash my yeast starters for a day or two, decant as much of the wort as I can, then swirl and shake the flask to get a good slurry for pitching.

Right now I have a Wyeast 1968 starter in the fridge. It's my first time with this yeast, but based on past experience with other high flocculation yeasts, I'm guessing it will have a pretty rubbery yeast cake.

I was reading an older post yesterday on starters, and noticed that one replier said he puts his starter back on the stir plate to mix it up after decanting most of the wort.

That sounded like a good idea to me, but I wanted to check with others to see if that would in any way be harmful to the yeast. I think it would mix the yeast up a lot more than shaking the flask will.

Thanks for your advice!

 

[day_trippr]

I doubt it'd do much if any harm (as long as you don't see the speed to "Macerate") but otoh if the cake is that firm it may not free it all up.

I've used all kinds of yeast and cold crash my starters and while there've been some tough cookies in the mix they all yield to a minute of vigorous swirling...

Cheers!

 

[schematix]

Don't decant all of the wort. Leave about equal volume of wort as the yeast cake to swirl it back into suspension. I guess you could use the stirplate, but 20 seconds of hand swirling accomplishes the same thing.

 

[alhounos]

Schematix got it. Don't worry about the starter beer going into the wort. Just swirl it a bit. There are a lot of people who don't cold crash and decant at all but instead pitch the whole starter a high krausen and it works fine, if not better.

You could possibly damage the yeast cells if you go mixing too hard on a compacted yeast cake. Not likely, but possible.