A few weeks ago I was making a starter for an upcoming brew and I began to think, wouldn't it be cheaper to make starters with wort from grain than from DME? Just for grins I built a SMaSH recipe to use up some cascade that's been sitting in the freezer, but instead of a 5.5 gallon batch I put 7.5 gallons in beersmith. I used enough 2-row to make my pre-boil gravity around 1.040 and once I finished sparging I pulled a little over two gallons off of my keggle and let it cool. Once it was cool I put the wort in sanitized growlers and threw them in the fridge. Today I pulled a growler and poured what I needed for a starter and boiled it up just like any other starter. The whole process seemed pretty simple and I'm sure it's quite a bit cheaper than DME. Has anyone else tried this method?
Wort for starters
- Thread starter taekwondd
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WoodlandBrew
Well-Known Member
That's a good idea. Not too entirely uncommon. For me growing 100 billion cells from DME is $0.70 and from grain is $0.50. Either way it sure beats $8.00.
I know it's not saving much, but I figured I was brewing anyways so why not. Also I really don't messing with DME so it made making the starter a lot cleaner.
Are you just storing them in the fridge? I'd be nervous about doing that for too long. I'm planning to pressure can several half gallon jars one of these days, if I can stop taking on new crazy projects.
I am, that's why I didn't go too crazy and collect several gallons. I was hoping for around two gallons which should make around four 2L starters, with my current brewing plans they shouldn't last too long. I figured if it worked well every few weeks I would just plan a mash that I could get an extra gallon or two.
Also, the hops provide a bit of a preservative.
midfielder5
Well-Known Member
freeze wort in single use size containers.
to use:
take out, defrost, boil 10 mi and voila- basically free starter wort (I take second runnings instead of adding extra grains).
to use:
take out, defrost, boil 10 mi and voila- basically free starter wort (I take second runnings instead of adding extra grains).
I used to do something similar. I just used 1L (or whatever was the appropriate size) of the finished wort, chilled it, pitched into that, then pitched the whole thing into the rest of the wort the next day at high krausen. zero extra cost
I took the wort before I started my boil and added any hops to it.
Good idea, then the wort would last almost indefinitely. What do you use to store it in?
