48 hours before brewing, make the starter now or tomorrow night

[havinafett]

Planning on brewing an extract brew Friday night with an OG of 1.048

Will making my yeast starter tonight or tomorrow night make a difference (good or bad)?

my first time using a stir plate as well

thanks!

 

[TheZymurgist]

Depends on whether you plan on decanting. I would say at this point it's probably too late to decant, though. What type of yeast, and are you hoping to pitch at high krausen?

 

[havinafett]

Yeast is WL east coast ale yeast. Honestly I haven't really considered the krausen.


Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew

 

[MindenMan]

You're gonna get mixed reviews on that question, I am guessing you are using a liquid yeast. There is a calculator suggesting how many yeast cells you should pitch. I know you want to use your new toy for making a yeast starter. But unless you were making a big beer, or a large quantity, some will say the liquid package has been working for years, and others, well, you know... Good luck.

EDIT: I wrote this post before the two above post were there.

 

[Qhrumphf]

You don't have enough time to ferment out the starter fully and cold crash/decant. So I'd definite say to just pitch the whole thing. Stir plate should make it smaller. In this situation (which I'm dealing with tonight myself), I'd opt for a little bit longer. When pitching an entire starter, it's a good idea to pitch it at high krausen. In my experience, 24 hours may not be enough to reach it, and 48 hours is usually a little to long. However, while you should have almost all your growth in 24 hours, there may still be some yeast reproduction happening, so I usually take the potential (small) decrease in yeast activity and give it 48 hours before pitching. It usually takes off like a rocket that way.

Normally I opt to prepare my starter about a week ahead of time, ferment out fully, cold crash it for a couple days, and then decant spent starter "beer" and just pitch slurry. But I get longer lag times doing that (only drawback). Pitching a whole starter at or near high krausen, the thing always takes off like a rocket. So when I plan on top cropping and want to make sure that fermentation kicks off fast enough, I do it that way.

 

[BryceL]

With an OG of 1.048, you will probably only need about a 1L starter. With a small starter like that I usually don't bother to decant (which is good since you don't really have time for that now). Like others mentioned, you want at least 24 hours for the cells to replicate. Pitching a starter at hight krausen will start your beer off in a hurry...I'm usually at that point anywhere between 24 and 36 hours. 48 hours isn't going to hurt you though.

 

[Zubius]

With an OG of 1.048 & white labs yeast, you don't need a starter.

Edit for the linky (first paragraph explains it) - http://www.whitelabs.com/content/homebrew-information

 

[ajf]

I make my starters at about 9 - 10 PM. In the summer when the house is about 70F + overnight, I make them the night before brewing, and pitch at about 2 - 3 PM the next day.
In the winter, the house drops down to 55 - 60F, and I make the starters one day earlier, otherwise it doesn't have time to multiply sufficiently. This is using a stir plate which adds a little bit of heat to a 1 liter starter.

-a.

 

[k1ngl1ves]

With that low of an OG, you don't really need a starter.

With that said, a 1L starter will be more than enough after 12-18 hours, because you're using a stir plate.

I'd just pitch it straight from the tube.

 

[fmr_army]

My general feeling (and practice) is that it's almost never too early to make a starter, but it can be late. I'd rather let the yeasties go a little dormant than not have enough time to really get going. There's a sweet spot in there that I can sometimes hit, but you can't go too far wrong in either direction.

 

[flars]

Planning on brewing an extract brew Friday night with an OG of 1.048

Will making my yeast starter tonight or tomorrow night make a difference (good or bad)?

my first time using a stir plate as well

thanks!

What is the production date of your yeast? With an OG of 1.048 a one-half liter starter may be more than sufficient. Can pitch the entire half liter without any worrying about off flavor contribution. A half liter can ferment out in less than 24 hours.

 

[havinafett]

Thanks everyone for the input!

I ended up making a starter last night around 9

Started with 1L but it ended up being 850ML by the end of the 10 minute boil

used 3/4 cup DME


To be honest I'm going to have to re-check the production date on the yeast.

As far as the OG being low enough to only pitch one vile, I've done so on a beer with the same OG and the beer did not reach the expected FG. When I asked about this at my LHBS they told me I should always make a starter with liquid yeast to make sure there's more than enough yeast to do the job.

 

[TheZymurgist]

I always make a starter, no matter what. Much better to over pitch, than under. At home brew levels, it's pretty hard to over pitch to the point you're adversely affecting your beer, unless you're trying to under pitch in order to stress the yeast to obtain a specific flavor profile.

 

[Qhrumphf]

I always make a starter, no matter what. Much better to over pitch, than under. At home brew levels, it's pretty hard to over pitch to the point you're adversely affecting your beer, unless you're trying to under pitch in order to stress the yeast to obtain a specific flavor profile.

I wouldn't say it's better to overpitch than underpitch. I would say that lower pitching rates are riskier and more likely to have negative effects than higher pitching rates. Some folks are completely gung-ho about always using 0.75 million cells per milliliter per degree Plato for an ale, or 1.5 million cells/ml/°P for a lager, or simply using 1 million cells/ml/°P all around.

Me? I like to think of pitching rate as a variable that can be adjusted, just like mash temp, or even better, mash pH. Go too far one way or the other, and you have potentially major problems, just like mash temp or pH. Or like pH, there's some baseline numbers that will work for everything (the pitching rates above), but slight tweaks in the pH up or down can have subtle but noticeable effects on the beer.

As such, I typically pitch higher for cleaner beers to suppress esters, but for yeast-forward beers (English, Belgian, and Weizen styles), I find that the accepted 0.75 mil cells/ml/°P ale pitching rate (the rate that Mr. Malty goes by) is too high to coax the esters I want out of the yeasts. By reducing the rate down to 0.5 mil, or even 0.375 mil, I get much more yeast character. I wouldn't go lower than that though.

 

[TheZymurgist]

I wouldn't say it's better to overpitch than underpitch. I would say that lower pitching rates are riskier and more likely to have negative effects than higher pitching rates. Some folks are completely gung-ho about always using 0.75 million cells per milliliter per degree Plato for an ale, or 1.5 million cells/ml/°P for a lager, or simply using 1 million cells/ml/°P all around.

Me? I like to think of pitching rate as a variable that can be adjusted, just like mash temp, or even better, mash pH. Go too far one way or the other, and you have potentially major problems, just like mash temp or pH. Or like pH, there's some baseline numbers that will work for everything (the pitching rates above), but slight tweaks in the pH up or down can have subtle but noticeable effects on the beer.

As such, I typically pitch higher for cleaner beers to suppress esters, but for yeast-forward beers (English, Belgian, and Weizen styles), I find that the accepted 0.75 mil cells/ml/°P ale pitching rate (the rate that Mr. Malty goes by) is too high to coax the esters I want out of the yeasts. By reducing the rate down to 0.5 mil, or even 0.375 mil, I get much more yeast character. I wouldn't go lower than that though.

I completely agree with you, I'm just not quite there yet, at least as far as experience goes. I've got the theory down, but I haven't experimented with pitching rates yet. Until I have the chance to, I'd rather err on the side of caution and use temperature to coax or suppress esters.

 

[IL1kebeer]

Make your starter 12-18 hours before pitching for best results. You will be at high krausen and almost all of your growth will be done.