Quick! Take yeast starter volume into account when adding to wort?

[JeffersonJ]

Currently cooling my wort and have a quick question.

I'm brewing a 1.075 OG stout. I did a partial boil - I have three gallons of wort and will be adding two gallons of water.

I made a 2.5 quart yeast starter the other day. When adding the starter, should I take it's volume into account? As in, if my goal is to have five gallons in the primary, should I:

A. Fill the primary to 4.5 gallons and then top off with the starter
Or
B. Fill to 5 gallons and then add the yeast starter

Thanks in advance!

 

[trevorc13]

Top to five gal. Decant the liquid of the starter and dump the yeast at the bottom.

 

[SKMO]

Ditto what trevorc13 said. Pour 90% of the the top liquid down the drain. Swirl up the yeast on the bottom pour it in.

 

[Beer_Guy]

If you have time, cold crash the starter, then the decant liquid and pitch the slurry only. IMO, pitching without cold crashing wastes a lot of healthy yeast cells.

I am usually pressed for time when I am home and can brew so I use light LME or DME to make my starters and then dump it all in. If the starter has already fermented some you will never be able to read the true OG, but those few points are of little concern to me.

Oh, and I try to remember to leave enough room in the fermenter for the starter. Then top off a little more if needed. I get my OG reading AFTER I pitch the starter and have topped off. Most of the time my starters are just beginning to ferment so I do not miss the target OG often.

 

[JeffersonJ]

Thanks for the quick responses. I cold-crashed the starter quickly for about an hour and poured off about half.

Wish I would have thought the process all the way through and cold crashed a day in advance. Oh well, lesson learned!

 

[Beer_Guy]

I am sure you did fine. I just hate wasting good ingredients.

 

[trevorc13]

Yeah if you dumped the full 2 qts, I doubt it would do anything negative, but you may have had a hint of that starter wort which doesn't taste that good. Glad we could catch you in time though.

 

[JeffersonJ]

I am sure you did fine. I just hate wasting good ingredients.

I would say so -- eight hours after pitching I already had krausen in the airlock of my 6.5 Gallon fermenting bucket!