toddouglas
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- Aug 25, 2016
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I've been brewing for about a year now and made the transition to all grain brewing a couple of months ago. Over the past few weeks, I've been trying to educate myself on the hows and whys of making starters. Up to now, I have never made a starter, but have rather used single packs of dry yeast, and more recently, Wyeast. But I keep getting back to this problem - when I plug my numbers into a starter calculator, it almost always tells me I'm significantly underpitching. Even the Wyeast website says I need to make starters given my circumstances (high gravity beer, high OG, etc.). But using the single packets has always gotten me to my desired FG. I'll give you a couple of examples. I'm currently working on a pumpkin ale. Started out at 1.094, and using Wyeast 1028 without making a starter, I'm already at 1.022 in five days, and fermentation hasn't even stopped yet. Another example: brewed a Belgian Dubbel, and a single packet of Wyeast 3787 took it from 1.074 to 1.005 in about two weeks. And finally, brewed an IPA with T-58, which took about 20 days to get from 1.067 to 1.016. In each case, the batches have been around 5 1/2 gallons. I'm hitting my FG goals, but the calculators say I'm underpitching. Can someone please explain this? Are there other benefits to making starters that suggest I should be making them even though I'm getting these results? Thanks in advance for any guidance!