Starter math gone awry, what I've been doing....with success

[petep1980]

So mental retardation for whatever reason has kicked in my last two batches. I use a stir starter, and I re-use yeast, so I always make a starter. My kitchen scale broke, so I was eye-balling DME for starters, but I got a new scale. I would always do a 1L starter, so that would be 1/4lb DME. Easy as pie.

My scale is set to grams for whatever reason, so my last two batches I wanted to go up to 1250mL, so I figured I needed more DME. Planning to weigh out my 1/4lb plus a little, I thought to myself....how many grams is 1/4lb? My answer was "duh, grams are metric, so it's 250g." I had to make more because it was a 1250mL starter, so really "I needed around 310g".

I weighed it out, god it looked like a ton. Whatever, starter prepared, cooled, yeast pitched, away we go.

On the porter I brewed yesterday I got a 1inch+ krausen w/in 9 hours with 1028 using this method.

The moral of the story, you don't need to be super anal about starters.

 

[Myke_J]

I just do 10:1 ratio on my starters, 1.5L = 150gr, to shoot for around 1.036-1.044.

Your starter was higher gravity then what is ideal, but it's still going to get the yeasties going.

 

[pkeeler]

Sugar + yeast = more yeast

 

[ajf]

how many grams is 1/4lb? My answer was "duh, grams are metric, so it's 250g."

That would be true if 1 lb weighed 1 kg. The real answer is ~114

-a.

 

[petep1980]

That would be true if 1 lb weighed 1 kg. The real answer is ~114

-a.

Yeah, like I said, I was mentally retarded.