Made high gravity starter, already pitched yeast... now what?

[darkrabbit]

Hey all, first post to the forum, looking for some advice. Be forewarned I am new to liquid yeast and indeed home brewing so when you see what I did you'll understand why

Created a starter with 1L of water and 100g DME.. 1L pre-boil. Thought this was what I should have done. Nope. After boil and chilling ended up with ~700mL of wort, pitched WL300 yeast in my 2L flask, now it's on a stir plate. I pitched because I thought that the yeast still had lots of food as the DME volume was adequate, I didn't realize yeast could become stressed. Yet another lesson learned next time I know just to dilute the wort with boiling water, chill it some more, and pitch then.

So I have a high gravity starter and I am now concerned I may have just over exerted my yeast. What should I do? I plan on brewing Sunday so I have some options:

1) Use the resulting starter cake on Sunday as is.

2) Make a second starter with this one and do it the right way this time. Can I do this or is my yeast 'damaged'?

I am making a Hefeweizen if that matters. 5gal.

Thanks in advance! This forum is awesome.

 

[myndflyte]

I say just pitch it in your beer. Depending on the flavor you want from the hefe yeast, people will actually underpitch to stress them and get specific flavors.

 

[STMF]

You must have boild alot if you managed to lose 300ml.

But, there is no big harm. Pitch it and it will probably be fine.

 

[myndflyte]

You must have boild alot if you managed to lose 300ml.

Yeah that too. Next time just boil like 5 or 10 min and you're good.

 

[RM-MN]

Yeah that too. Next time just boil like 5 or 10 min and you're good.

Even better is to boil for only 1 second. It really doesn't take that long to pasteurize the water but it is hard to stop the boil quickly.

 

[ThePaleAleIndian]

Short answer: RDWAHAHB, just pitch as is. You'll be fine.

Long answer: 100 g to 1 L is about the same ratio of DME to water I use to make starters. Let's say that puts you in the 1.040 ish zone. Boiling 30% of your volume off will put you in the 1.057 zone. Yes, that is high for a starter. But people repitch yeast from primary yeast cakes at that gravity all the time. The yeast companies say not to repitch yeast from a high gravity ferment, but they seem to define that as 1.060-1.065 or so. You are still under that cutoff, so if I were in your position I'd just pitch it.

I boil my starters for about 15 minutes and never had an issue. As long as you don't boil it to a syrup, the temperature will be constant at around 212F at a boil, regardless of how long you boil it, so the amount of time it takes to cool it will not change. Personally I add a little water during the boil to compensate for boiloff in my starters. Usually it's less than a cup in a 2L starter.

Just my $0.02.

 

[darkrabbit]

Thanks all, I feel a lot better about it now. I put it on a stir plate for 26h, now it's in my fridge. I never saw the activity, but I put it on the stir at 8:30PM and didn't check again until 1PM next day so I likely missed it. The cake is starting to show, it's quite exciting, looking forward to Sunday brew!

To answer, I boiled for 15 mins. It's what I read, so that's what I did. I THEN decided to check here and a lot of people only boil for a few mins, so I think that's what I'll do next time. I guess I wasn't sure what the purpose of the boil was, I thought it was to 'cook' the DME, but if it's just to sanitize I guess I only need a minute technically...

Thanks again!