Yeast starter screw up

Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum

Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

RotorHead6

Well-Known Member
Joined
Jan 16, 2007
Messages
86
Reaction score
0
I made my first yeast starter last night. The OG of the starter was 1.114. Yikes!! I didn't realize at the time that the OG should not be that high and I could be possibly stressing out the yeast. The yeast is White Labs American Ale Yeast Blend. It was pitched last night around 09:30pm. What problems am I facing and is there anyway to "dilute" the mixture?
 
How much DME did you use and what size is the starter? The OG seems highly unlikely unless you added WAY too much extract.

That OG will definitely be too much for the yeast and it will acclimate them to a much higher gravity environment than what you are planning to brew. I'm not sure if you can add more water now to dilute it, perhaps others on here can answer that.
 
You could add water if you're extremely careful about sanitation. But for the risks involved with contaminating that whole batch, vs shocking the yeast from an already viable vial, and then pitching the shocked but still viable yeast into wort, i'd say just leave it be. You won't get as high a yield or as active of yeast if you'd have done it with a starter of 1.040-1.050, but it's not like you pitched them into bleach.

If you're really worried about it you could add about 2g of diammonium phosphate (yeast energizer) while cooling your 5gal of wort . Aerate it well, and then pitch the starter. The DAP will help provide some free amino nitrogen to "de-stress" the yeast. But really, I wouldn't worry too much about it.
 
I used 8oz. of DME and this is the catch. I either added 16oz. of water or 32oz. of water. That is was I'm not sure of. The wife was talking to me about some sort of nonsense and I got distracted!
 
You may have way underpitched. Carefully boil and cool some water and add it. you should be fine.
 
RotorHead6 said:
I used 8oz. of DME and this is the catch. I either added 16oz. of water or 32oz. of water. That is was I'm not sure of. The wife was talking to me about some sort of nonsense and I got distracted!
Where exactly did you get that ratio from? That's either 2x or 4x as much as you probably ought to be using, depending on which amount of water you used - by quick back-of-the-envelope calculations, if you used 32oz of water your OG should be like 1.092, whereas starters are usually in the 1.03-1.05 range...

My usual rate is 1oz DME per cup of water. That gives an OG equal to the potential yield (PPPG) of the DME - typically 1.046 or so - since there are conveniently 16 cups in a gallon and 16 ounces in a pound. Plus it's incredibly easy to remember, and if you just remember this base amount you can easily adjust the OG up or down by just guesstimating and using a bit more or less DME.

Alternatively, for those using metric, 1 gram per 10ml (100g per liter) is pretty easy to remember as well, and should result in an OG about 15% lower than the above case (~1.040)
 
I'm at work for the rest of tonight but muy wife said that it is fermenting away. I'm hoping since I have good fermentation that everything should be OK.
 
Back
Top