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Smack Pack with 2 pouches?

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dummkauf

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Joined
Dec 26, 2009
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Location
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I am using my first ever liquid yeast in a smack pack, and was making a starter tonight. I smacked the pack earlier today, and the package ballooned up like expected after a few hours. I then made a starter wort using some of the DME that will be used in the brew tomorrow. However, when I got to the point where I cut open the yeast packet to dump into my wine bottle full of wort(no beakers so I'm using a bottle), the packet fell out, with 2 pouches. 1 pouch was empty, and the the other was full of a dark liquid. The 2 pouches were joined in the middle but only one had popped. I am assuming that second pouch was more yeast, so I cut it open with my sanitised scissors, and poured it into the bottle, shook the bottle up, and it's sitting in the cupboard with foil over the top currently.

Should there have been 2 pouches of yeast in the smack pack? or was that second unpopped pack something else that I shouldn't have poured into the starter?
 
also, do I dump the whole bottle of starter into my wort when I'm done brewing, or do I pour off the the starter liquid and just pitch the yeast on the bottom of the bottle?
 
The yeast in a smack pack is loose. The pouch contains a nutrient. If you had two pouches, you just had some extra nutrient. You could have left it, or do what you did. Either would be perfectly acceptable.
I dump the whole starter into the brew unless it is bigger that 2 quarts. If you decant and just pitch the slurry, you are throwing away a lot of the yeast unless you chill it for a few days to cause the yeast to flocculate.

-a.
 
Thanks for the info! I will be dumping the whole mixture into the beer then. I only used 2 cups of water for the starter so I'm definitely not over 2 quarts.
 
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