Starter yeast

[tommy24a]

See guys talking about making a starter years. Can someone please explain the purpose? Thank!

 

[AJinJacksonville]

The purpose is to propagate the yeast, which basically boosts its numbers to take on the fermentation process. If you do comparisons between dry yeast and liquid yeast, you'll see that the cell count in dry yeast is higher, thus negating the need for a starter in most circumstances. Liquid yeast will struggle on some higher gravity beers and may get stressed out due to a lower overall cell count when compared to dry yeast.

I have never made a starter using dry yeast...and I've never had a problem with fermentation. On the other hand, I've had issues pitching liquid yeast without a starter when pitching into a higher gravity beer.

Some dry yeasts will suggest you re-hydrate the yeast in a sterile water prior to pitching. Again, not necessary. I pitched an un-rehydrated dry yeast directly onto the wort and it worked just as smoothly as the same brand/strand when I re-hydrated in sterile water.

 

[jpakstis]

In addition to what AJinJacksonville wrote above I’d usually make a “vitality” starter i.e. I would overbuild it by 0.5 liters and save that for future use. I would do it with dry yeast mainly to save costs. Gram for gram the most expensive ingredient by far in brewing beer is yeast.

The other, more interesting, reason to me to make a vitality starter was to harvest yeast from beers like Heady Topper or Julius, breweries that don’t use readily-available yeast strains. That’s been lessened with the recent releases of Conan-type strains from places like Imperial but it’s still pretty cool in my opinion to “make your own.”

 

[tommy24a]

Does it have to be the same type of yeast that the recipe of the beer u plan to make calls for?

 

[VikeMan]

Does it have to be the same type of yeast that the recipe of the beer u plan to make calls for?

It is the yeast you'll be using in your beer. It's not "starter yeast." It's a yeast starter.

 

[tommy24a]

It is the yeast you'll be using in your beer. It's not "starter yeast." It's a yeast starter.

Got it..so I would make it ahead of time? How long ahead of brewing?

 

[VikeMan]

Got it..so I would make it ahead of time? How long ahead of brewing?

I cold crash and decant my starters after they are finished. So I make my starters 2-3 days ahead of brewday, so that they have 1-2 days in the fridge before brew day.

Decanting discards most of the (mostly) yeast-free liquid, so that what ends up in the beer wort is mostly yeast.

 

[Maxkling]

There is something called pitching rate. This is how many cells of yeast required for your recipe. So if your recipe requires X amount of yeast but your yeast packet only provides Y, then you need to make up the difference. You can either buy more yeast or make a starter to propagate more yeast. There are lots of online calculators that help you with your pitch rate and starter sizes.

Starters take time, as you will grow yeast with a mini fermentation and usually should be done a few days before brew day.

Just YouTube it and you will get lots of info and see first hand how it works.

 

[Jim R]

This is basically what I do although I now use a cheap stir plate.