Drinking your yeast starter

[CorporateHippie]

Now while I am sure there is a post somewhere about this......I don't care.
Just wanted to post what I am drinking right now. This is the one and only bottle of my ??Belgian nut brown?? I had a 1 liter starter of Whitelabs Abbey Ale Yeast going at the end of October. I used wort from a batch of Bourbon Barrel Nut Brown I did the week or two before that didn't fit in my fermenter. It went for a little over a week and the yeast all flocked out. I decanted enough liquid to fill this one champagne bottle and the rest got pitched into my Belgian Tripel. No idea what the FG is but OG was like 1.050. Being that it wasn't in the flask very long before bottled, I decided to not add ANY priming sugar. I just dumped it in the bottle and capped it. Now almost two full months later I decided to see what I had. It tastes great! A little sweet but it has all the Belgian character from the yeast and the burnt nut flavors from the grist. Not what I would call AMAZING but very drinkable for what would have otherwise been washed down the sink. I have a huge Brett B. Starter going now (2 liters) that I will bottle a couple from. Take from this what you will.....but why not have fun with a free bomber or two.

 

[IslandLizard]

That was a good idea.

I sometimes drink some of the starter beer, giving me somewhat of an indication of the yeast's character. The beer is quite a bit oxidized though, and pretty rough. Your complex wort masks a lot of that. OG is a bit heavy for a starter, though.

 

[watermelon83]

From what I've read a lot of the no-chill crowd uses actual wort from the batch cooling to make a starter for he batch cooling. Pretty cool, and you know the yeast will be conditioned for your specific batch I guess.

 

[IslandLizard]

From what I've read a lot of the no-chill crowd uses actual wort from the batch cooling to make a starter for he batch cooling. Pretty cool, and you know the yeast will be conditioned for your specific batch I guess.

Wow, that takes an extra day or 2 after brewing.

That wort maybe too high gravity to grow yeast at an optimal rate, unless they dilute it to an OG of 1.035-1.040, which seems to be the norm for growing from refrigerated (dormant) yeast. It will have the right sugar composition. Perhaps that helps.

I noticed getting better attenuation from previously used yeast.

 

[watermelon83]

I don't know, the downsides of pitching into a higher gravity wort are that some of your cells are going to die off before they have a chance to bud, right? If that happens in a starter you should still end up with, after growth, far more cells than one would have just pitching into the beer. Also, the new cells are already perfectly conditioned to thrive in the higher gravity beer. If we believe that pitching into a heavier wort kills them, what's the difference when the murder is committed? Starter or main fermenter?