Yeast starter worries..

[AleFred]

this was my first attempt at making a starter the strain is white labs cali v ale. on the white labs site is says 2 pints to a half cup dme, for o.g's over 1.060...im doing the bear racer ipa clone from austins, it has an original gravity of 1.072... i pitched the yeast into the wort last night a lil after 11 pm, right now its sitting in a growler with foil atop. my worries are that there's no krausen or foam, on top of that i can't see into it very well with the amber glass so dark..i wanted to start my partial mash around 6-7 today, do i have to wait another day? have i done something wrong? please help me homebrew council!

ps i have been swirling it around 2 to 3 times an hr aswell

 

[BigTerp]

I did a starter with my first brew a few weeks ago. It was with Wyeast 1272, IIRC. Anyway my starter showed ZERO signs of activity. I used a glass mason jar and had a volume of 1.5 liters and used 150 grams of extra light dme. After about 12 hours it looked like this.

After 24 hours it looked like this.

Notice the nice milky white layer on top of the trub? As Revvy will tell you, activity in a starter doesn't mean a thing. It's the nice white layer of yeast your looking for. My Wyeast packet spent 3 days in 100 degree weather and then sat on my porch in 100 degrees for half a day. My fermentation took off in about 12 hours. You should be fine.

 

[Revvy]

'Terp save me some work!!! He's right.

 

[AleFred]

thanks guys...need to find some sort way to see if i can see that layer...definitely using a mason jar for my next starter for obvious reasons.

 

[dukes7779]

excuse my ignorance but wouldn't you get that white yeast layer anyway? I mean you are putting a smack pack or vial into a starter, both of which contain yeast. Couldn't it just be the yeast from the smack pack sitting down there and not necessarily having any growth?

 

[AleFred]

dukes i thought of that and i honestly do not know...time to relax and have a homebrew

 

[Revvy]

excuse my ignorance but wouldn't you get that white yeast layer anyway? I mean you are putting a smack pack or vial into a starter, both of which contain yeast. Couldn't it just be the yeast from the smack pack sitting down there and not necessarily having any growth?

No, the amount of regular yeast in a smack pack or tube is really small....if you see a layer of yeast, it multiplied.

 

[Mpavlik22]

If all conditions (pitching temp, healthy viable yeast, wort ~1.030-1.050, aeration) are met I believe yeast will multiply at a rate of approx 3x.

 

[LVBen]

From White Labs (http://www.whitelabs.com/beer/homebrew_information.html):

Homebrewers who enjoy yeast culturing: If a starter is made from a fresh vial, one vial can be added directly to a 2 liter starter, which in 2 days will grow to approximately 240 billion cells, to achieve a pitching rate in 5 gallons of of 1 million cells/ml/degree Plato (with a 12 Plato beer).