Questions about my yeast starter

[drummerguy]

This is my first multi-step starter, and only my second starter ever. On Wednesday I boiled my wort, added my yeast (Wyeast 3787), and set my flask on the stir plate. I checked it last night and there was still a bit of foam on top. I decided I let it go one more night before putting it in the refrigerator. When I woke up today, I saw this. I know the temperature in the room got up to 78 degrees, but I quickly lowered it with a fan. Is the starter ruined? Is there still enough yeast to do another step? Also, should I go ahead and put it in the refrigerator?

My second question is about added fresh wort for the second step. Do I need to cool the wort in the pot before adding it to the flask? After adding the wort, do I need to swirl everything before putting it back on the stir plate? I'm sure these are dumb questions, but I don't want to mess it up.

 

[ScrewyBrewer]

Starters aren't that sensitive to temperatures in the upper 70's so not to worry there. Judging from the looks of it I don't think your starter needs to be stepped up anymore there's obviously plenty of yeast activity.

A 100 billion cell smack pack in a two liter starter should double the cell count, which should be just about right for fermenting an ale. I would decant and split the original starter into two flasks, add 1.035 wort and spin both to grow 400 billions cells, if it were lager yeast.

 

[flars]

You have lost very little yeast and the 78° did not ruin the starter. The wort will taste really bad though. Without hops they never taste really good any way. Some yeasts take a little longer than others on the stir plate. Let it go until you know it is completely fermented before crash cooling.

A test of whether or not it is done, is to turn the stir plate off for a few hours, then give the flask a shake. If an instant krausen forms the starter hasn't finished the ferment.

 

[TopherM]

Starters are just little mini beer fermentations, and they can blow off just like a full beer batch can. No predicting it, just random yeast activity.

 

[stratslinger]

Starters aren't that sensitive to temperatures in the upper 70's so not to worry there. Judging from the looks of it I don't think your starter needs to be stepped up anymore there's obviously plenty of yeast activity.

A 100 billion cell smack pack in a two liter starter should double the cell count, which should be just about right for fermenting an ale. I would decant and split the original starter into two flasks, add 1.035 wort and spin both to grow 400 billions cells, if it were lager yeast.

See, without knowing the gravity of volume of the ale he's planning, or the viability of the yeast he started with, this is just not really great advice. If he went in with a plan to do a stepped up starter, there was most likely a reason - maybe a big beer, maybe a 10 gallon batch, maybe something else.

So, to answer his original question - and to chime in with others - it doesn't look like you likely lost too much, I definitely wouldn't worry about it being ruined.

Go ahead and move forward with your plan to step it up - not sure if you planned to decant off the spent wort or not, but that can be a good step to buy yourself a little extra room in the flask. Definitely make sure to chill the wort in the second step before you add it to the flask - bring it right down to pitching temp (or thereabouts) for the yeast - you're likely to get some limited thermal shock from pulling the flask out of the fridge and adding the new wort, but at least you won't be cooking the yeast! Also, you can definitely swirl it up a little before adding it to the stir plate - but that's probably a little redundant, since that's pretty much what the stir plate is gonna do for you anyway!

 

[drummerguy]

Thanks for all the comments, I definitely feel better about it now. I'll probably let it the foam recede before placing it into the refrigerator.

Starters aren't that sensitive to temperatures in the upper 70's so not to worry there. Judging from the looks of it I don't think your starter needs to be stepped up anymore there's obviously plenty of yeast activity.

A 100 billion cell smack pack in a two liter starter should double the cell count, which should be just about right for fermenting an ale. I would decant and split the original starter into two flasks, add 1.035 wort and spin both to grow 400 billions cells, if it were lager yeast.

See, without knowing the gravity of volume of the ale he's planning, or the viability of the yeast he started with, this is just not really great advice. If he went in with a plan to do a stepped up starter, there was most likely a reason - maybe a big beer, maybe a 10 gallon batch, maybe something else.

I realize now that I should have mentioned this in the first post. I am brewing a 5.5 gallon batch of a Belgian Blonde Ale with an OG of 1.075. YeastCalc said I would need 284 billions cells for fermentation. My starting count was 64 billions cells. I used enough water/DME for a 1.5 liter starter, but, according to the markings on the flask, ended up with a 1.2 liter starter. This should give me 237 billion cells when finished. I plan to decant the spent wort and add another liter of wort to get me to around 318 billion cells. I know this is a bit high, but the yeast traveled from Minnesota to Tennessee and sat on my porch for about 4 hours before I was able to get it into the refrigerator. I just wanted to be sure I had enough for fermentation. Will that amount of yeast cause issues when it's time to pitch? Again, that's probably a dumb question, but I am still rather new to brewing.

 

[stratslinger]

That's a bit of an overpitch, but not much of one, and shouldn't be a big deal at all. Particularly with the treatment that yeast saw, your starting cell count may have been lower than you think, so probably best to aim a little high anyway.

 

[jbaysurfer]

Thanks for all the comments, I definitely feel better about it now. I'll probably let it the foam recede before placing it into the refrigerator.







I realize now that I should have mentioned this in the first post. I am brewing a 5.5 gallon batch of a Belgian Blonde Ale with an OG of 1.075. YeastCalc said I would need 284 billions cells for fermentation. My starting count was 64 billions cells. I used enough water/DME for a 1.5 liter starter, but, according to the markings on the flask, ended up with a 1.2 liter starter. This should give me 237 billion cells when finished. I plan to decant the spent wort and add another liter of wort to get me to around 318 billion cells. I know this is a bit high, but the yeast traveled from Minnesota to Tennessee and sat on my porch for about 4 hours before I was able to get it into the refrigerator. I just wanted to be sure I had enough for fermentation. Will that amount of yeast cause issues when it's time to pitch? Again, that's probably a dumb question, but I am still rather new to brewing.

How'd you get your initial yeast cell count? If it was the auto calculator on Mr. Malty based on the package date, I would say you're close enough to a full pitch with the starter you've already got. That calculator IMHO over emphasizes the degradation of yeast cells over time. So in other words, your starter was higher gravity then you intended, meaning it'll produce more cells then the same volume at 1.035, and your calculator easily might've underestimated the cells you initially started with. I think you're within a stones throw of the proper pitch amount and I'd just roll with that.

You can step up if you want of course, and as everyone else has already said, you're fine to do so, but I'd probably save the time, the effort, and the DME personally.

 

[jbaysurfer]

That's a bit of an overpitch, but not much of one, and shouldn't be a big deal at all. Particularly with the treatment that yeast saw, your starting cell count may have been lower than you think, so probably best to aim a little high anyway.

LOL you could be right, but I wrote the post below before seeing this. I tend to lean the other way in that he had more then 68B cells. If it came from the east coast, but isn't a lager yeast (it's not, belgians do fine in warmer temps in terms of viability) and it's fairly fresh, I doubt it's as low as 68B...but this is all me just going from experience and it's speculative.

Edit:Also, side note, if he's 30-40B cells short, Belgian yeasts have been known to do well with a slight underpitch to develop that belgiany character they're famous for. Some commercial brewers deliberately underpitch them for just this reason.

 

[drummerguy]

That's a bit of an overpitch, but not much of one, and shouldn't be a big deal at all. Particularly with the treatment that yeast saw, your starting cell count may have been lower than you think, so probably best to aim a little high anyway.

That was my way of thinking. The package was warm to the touch when I got it and I just wanted to be sure I ended up with enough for a proper fermentation.

How'd you get your initial yeast cell count? If it was the auto calculator on Mr. Malty based on the package date, I would say you're close enough to a full pitch with the starter you've already got. That calculator IMHO over emphasizes the degradation of yeast cells over time. So in other words, your starter was higher gravity then you intended, meaning it'll produce more cells then the same volume at 1.035, and your calculator easily might've underestimated the cells you initially started with. I think you're within a stones throw of the proper pitch amount and I'd just roll with that.

You can step up if you want of course, and as everyone else has already said, you're fine to do so, but I'd probably save the time, the effort, and the DME personally.

I used Mr. Malty and YeastCalc do determine the number of cells needed and both said I needed around 284 billion cells. I also plugged the numbers into Brewer's Friend and it claimed I would only need 208 billion. According to YeastCalc, I should have 246 billion when this starter is complete, which is around the average of all three calculators. I may just pitch this and see what happens. If nothing else, it will be a good learning experience.

 

[william_shakes_beer]

To the OP: the good thing about brewing is there are multitudes of sub specialties that can and are studied. The bad thing about brewing is there are multitudes of sub specialties that can and are studied. If you choose to go tech about yeast and starters, there are pitching calculators that will tell you how many steps to make from the starter based on cell count, viability, temperature, phase of the moon, etc. Pesonally, I pull a vial of yeast out of the library, toss it in my starter wort and spin it til it stops foaming. If I'm ready to pitch I pitch. If not, I'll cold crash a couple days and decant if it smells funky. Thats just how I roll.

 

[jbaysurfer]

That was my way of thinking. The package was warm to the touch when I got it and I just wanted to be sure I ended up with enough for a proper fermentation.





I used Mr. Malty and YeastCalc do determine the number of cells needed and both said I needed around 284 billion cells. I also plugged the numbers into Brewer's Friend and it claimed I would only need 208 billion. According to YeastCalc, I should have 246 billion when this starter is complete, which is around the average of all three calculators. I may just pitch this and see what happens. If nothing else, it will be a good learning experience.

To be quite practical, I doubt you'd notice any difference even if you had precisely measured the cell count from the start and then pitched one at 240B vs. one at 280B.

40B cells is well within the range of error of those calculators. To be clear, I think they do a good job of calculating cells needed (although there is some dissent out there), but I don't know that I trust their calculating the cell number of the vial/pack based on date alone. in fact, there's also a margin of error in the amount of cells a vial or pack contains to start with. The 100B is an estimation not an actual count.

 

[ScrewyBrewer]

Making a yeast starter is like brewing a mini-batch of beer, well ok except the purpose is to increase yeast cell count not make a drinkable brew. There are limitations to how many cells can be created in a given volume of starter wort, the most you can hope to grow in a two liter starter is 230 billion cells. One of the very best tasting Oktoberfest Lager beers I ever brewed was pitched with yeast made from a four liter starter that I cold crashed and decanted before pitching. I just couldn't imagine pouring a gallon of starter wort into a five gallon batch of beer.

As for decanting starters and fear of pouring out the least floculant cells, the simple answer is cold crash the starter before decanting. The image below shows a starter I cold crashed on day one on the left and day three on the right, on brewday I took it out of the refrigerator in the morning and it was warm enough to pitch later that day.

 

[drummerguy]

Thanks again for all the information. I think I'll just put it in the refrigerator today and let it sit until brew day. It might not be ready by tomorrow, but I can probably push it off until Monday.