Yeast starter or smack pack adequate?

[Ondori]

I would definitely make a starter. I would just brew your beer as planned. Use some of your preboil wort and use that to make a starter (after boiling what you collected for starter of course). When I get all of my ingredients on same day. I will brew, put my fermenter in the chamber for 24-36 hours while my starter gets kicked off, and then dump it in. Good to go!

 

[rdbrett]

That is interesting, seems a little simpler than messing with weighing out DME and worrying about the OG of my starter. How come you can't just pull out enough for the starter during the boil? Put straight in flask and cool, and pitch? No doubt there's a reason.

So using this method, you would be assured to have the same OG as your 5 gal wort. right?

 

[Pratzie]

That is interesting, seems a little simpler than messing with weighing out DME and worrying about the OG of my starter. How come you can't just pull out enough for the starter during the boil? Put straight in flask and cool, and pitch? No doubt there's a reason.

So using this method, you would be assured to have the same OG as your 5 gal wort. right?

U could, however for a starter u want an OG of 1.030-1.040 so if the OG of the brew is higher it could stress the yeasties and make their buildup slower.

But there are alot of people who just save some extra runnings from previous batches for the purpose of making starters for their next batch.

 

[rdbrett]

I pulled flask off stir plate after about 24 hrs. There is no krausen forming on top. Can i assume its done then and put in fridge? White stuff settling to bottom some.

 

[Pratzie]

Is it nice and cloudy? I have barely ever had krausen foam in my starters with a stir plate
.

 

[rdbrett]

I would say its cloudy. When I take it off, it slowly starts to settle. With clearer brown liquid at the top. When I restarted it, cloudy/powdery looking stuff stirred up a bunch.

 

[novahokie09]

You will not see a Krausen on a stir plate if you're stirring fast enough to have a vortex. That's why you pull it off the plate. If no krausen forms after removing it from the plate along with no signs of bubbling present, you're out of the exponential growth phase and entering the stationary phase where the yeast have consumed the majority of available sugars and begin to flocculate.

In fact, you're describing flocculation when you stated that there's brown liquid forming near the top. The milky/cloudy stuff you describe are the yeast in suspension in the wort. I would place the starter in your refrigerator to cold crash. You'll have a nice milky layer of yeast on the bottom of your flask with a clear brown liquid on top in the morning.

 

[Brewskii]

This is around 400 billion I grew up for 2 brews last weekend. I didn't get the chance to brew them so here the yeast sit in the fridge. This is after 2 steps and a week in the fridge but you can see the yeast flocking or settling out to the bottom of the flask. The resultant beer at the top of the flask is clear enough to read through and gets cloudier toward the bottom.

It usually wont clear this well in the fridge because I will use it after a day or two but I happened to have it on hand so I thought I'd share what it looked like after a week in the fridge.