Am I wrong - yeast starter by eyeball

[BigFloppy]

Don't know how precise everyone else is when doing a starter but I've got plenty of LME from different sources and all I tend to do is give the flask a good glug or 2 of lme and effectively eyeball the mix rather than measuring..

Thoughts?

 

[55x11]

Don't know how precise everyone else is when doing a starter but I've got plenty of LME from different sources and all I tend to do is give the flask a good glug or 2 of lme and effectively eyeball the mix rather than measuring..

Thoughts?

the goal is to get gravity of the "wort" to about 1.040. Too low and there is not enough "food" for yeast, and too high and yeast gets "stressed".
I personally think it has a pretty wide margin of error, maybe as high as 25% (so anything from 1.030 to 1.050 will be fine for practical purposes).

So if you think you can eyeball your "glug or two" here and there divided by "splash or two of water" to right gravity ratio within 25%, you are probably ok.

having said that, why not measure it? Takes about 5 seconds.

 

[Subdivisions]

If you have a scale it's easy to just do a 10:1 water to DME ratio where water is in mL and DME is in grams. So for a 1L starter you'd use 100 grams of DME. If you don't have a scale then a cup of DME to a liter of water is better than guessing. You want the gravity to be around 1.04 but not too weak either.

 

[BigFloppy]

If you have a scale it's easy to just do a 10:1 water to DME ratio where water is in mL and DME is in grams. So for a 1L starter you'd use 100 grams of DME. If you don't have a scale then usually a cup to a liter is better than guessing. You want the gravity to be around 1.04 but not too weak either.

thats DME, I have plentiful LME... PITA to measure accurately

 

[55x11]

thats DME, I have plentiful LME... PITA to measure accurately

you can still weigh liquids - works as well as with solids. small plastic cup, place empty on scale, hit "tare" button, then add liquid, read the weight.

 

[Subdivisions]

thats DME, I have plentiful LME... PITA to measure accurately

Ooops. I see 'starter' and the L turned into a D in my brain. You can make it with LME but it is more of a pain like you said. It can be measured but it's sticky and pouring into other containers isn't ideal. If you have an eyeball measurement that has been working then just stick with it.