Quick Question about Starters

[natelindner]

Hi all. I've not yet made a starter as I've been making tiny batches but I'm going to graduate to 5 gallon batches soon. As such, I have a probably very stupid question about making a yeast starter.

I've read in multiple places that you should make your yeast starter with wort. It seems easy enough to boil some DME but I do all-grain. Does this mean I would have to brew my wort one day, take a few pints of it out, make a yeast slurry out of that, and then actually only start fermenting my wort the day after I brewed it?

 

[tally350z]

You will still want to use DME. I go down to my LHBS and buy a 3lb bag of it at a time. I will last me for a long time. Keep it simple.

 

[kh54s10]

You can take some base grain and mash it to get about 1.040 wort and make your starter ahead of brew day.

 

[kombat]

Heck no! Just make your starter with DME (and a little yeast nutrient). You're going to be pouring the resulting beer down the drain anyway and just pitching the yeast slurry, so you're preserving your "all-grain" credentials.

 

[kh54s10]

DME is easy though.

 

[glugglug]

+1 for DME. I typically pitch the whole thing into 5 gallons of wort.

FWIW, DME is good to have on hand anyway. There was one batch we made that was pretty low. We had DME on hand and brought OG back up to range. Beer was awesome!

 

[bja]

Increase your batch size to 5-1/2 gallon and use the extra 1/2 gallon of wort to make the starter for the next batch.

 

[stpug]

What tally said. DME is very easy.

Aside from that, I have collected additional runnings from all grain brewdays; boiled them down to about 1.030; and canned them in jars using a pressure cooker (some folks will just freeze it and boil it again for their starter). The nice thing about this is that, if they've been properly canned, they're sterile and ready for use right out of the jar. The bad thing is that it takes a bunch of extra time and you'll have some break material in your starter wort. In the end, I hardly find the extra effort worth it when DME is so much easier.

 

[natelindner]

thanks for the great responses everyone. One more thing: If I'm going to brew a large batch of lager, do I need to keep the slurry at low temperatures as it preps to be pitched? I intend to do a cold pitch.