Save some starter?

Hey gang,

As some you may have read, I made my first starter Fri night. It occurs to me that I should be able to save some of my starter in the vial the yeast originally came in and use it to make another starter the next time I brew (given I want to use the same yeast). Any reason that isn't a completely logical and rational thing to do?

Thanks in advance.

JB

 

It's logical and rational to me as I've done the same thing. Make sure it's not still fermenting and clean and sanitize the vial first, of course. And I put electrical tape around the cap just to be a little more airtight.

 

I want to try this, how do you go about saving the starter?? How long will it be viable? It's a wyeast American ale. I am assuming you could keep doing this several times? Or no? It would sure save on yeast costs...

 

The main purpose of making a starter is to increase the cell count to that required for the beer.
It seems counter intuitive to me to make a starter to increase the cell count, and then to reduce the cell count before brewing.
I make the starter, and brew with it. When I'm ready to keg, I harvest the yeast (There's a lot more of it after brewing the batch), and wash it, dividing the washed yeast into 4 mason jars., each of which will make another brew. For the next brew, I make a starter from the washed yeast in one of the mason jars, and again harvest that yeast when the brew is ready to keg. I only go to 3 generations because I once got a mutation after about 4 or 5 generations, and I think getting 21 brews out of 1 vial gives a very good ROI.
The only problem that I can see with doing this is if you make a beer with a S.G. > 1.060, when people who know much more than I do say that the yeast gets unduly stressed and should not be re-used. If I make a higher gravity brew, I just flush the yeast down the drain when it's done it's job. It's supposed to be very good for the septic tank.

-a.

 

Check out this thread, which covers a nice way of making a big starter with the intent of saving some for next time.

 

i put about 1 1/2 ounce of glycerine in a 4 oz canning jar then cook it in the pressure cooker for 15 minutes. i usually do 1.5 l starters and use about 9 ounces of that to mix with the glycerine and i freeze the yeast. Works great so far. Havent bought liquid yeast in quite a few months now.

 

The main reason I was thinking of saving some of the starter instead of harvesting after fermentation was because the yeast are earlier gen without having been through the stress of a full batch.

 

Sometimes the later generations are actually better, but if you are making a real hoppy or high gravity beer, you might not have any other choice. That being said, I don't think it's counterintuitive at all. Just make a little more yeast than you need and save a little.

 

Just use a yeast calculator to know how much yeast you get from your starter then decant it into separate containers. I put 150mL into mason jars. Then make sure you take down the #'s and org date of manufacture so you can guess at your yeast viability in the future. I get 8-10 batches off each yeast i buy and i could get more with more generations, but i dont want to get too greedy