I tried something new, have any of you done this?

[ElCid79]

So I made my first starter yesterday right about noon. Wound up about 650ml of water or so with 4oz dme. (I know this is a little bit too much water, first time I didn't read up on it. Just eyeballed about right.)

I pitched my WLP500 into it, and it was very slow to take off. This morning I woke up and it was very active.

I started my brew session mid afternoon and it was time to pitch at just about 6pm.

I pitched about 80% or so of the starter into cooled wort and left the rest inside of the erl flask.

I boiled about 1/3 a cup of DME that I had been saving, cooled it, and added it to that same flask. Its bubbling away nicely. The way that I figure, if the fermentation hangs for whatever reason, I can then pitch this in there. Or I may go ahead and pitch it tomorrow. What are your thoughts?

 

[Cbaddad]

You could also just save it for your next brew.

 

[ElCid79]

Yeah, if I get a good fermentation and a solid FG reading I will just save it, and use it down the road. Or give it to someone in the homebrew club that is making something heavy. Do any of you have any experience doing this?

 

[ElCid79]

Well, I got to looking at it, and realized I had boiled off more of the water than I had intended. I added a little tap water to it and the fermentation seems to have totally frozen. I may have shot myself in the foot here. Ill keep an eye on it and let you know. I didn't put very much maybe 80-100ml or so..... I couldn't imagine that little bit messing the yeasts up to much, but well see..

 

[k_mcarthur]

The basic idea is a sound and widely used practice for stretching a yeast culture over many brews, just need to focus on a few important aspects. First volumes are very important, a 1L starter is generally the starter volume needed for a sufficient pitch cell count. If this is what you want to do shoot for 1.2L next time, also always try to get 100g of DME per 1L of post boil water. Too much or not enough DME can stress yeast and affect viability. Second is sanitation, if you plan on keeping the yeast for any amount of time everything that touches your starter needs to be sterilized. Adding tap water may have introduced some unwanted bugs, as long as you use it soon it should be fine.