Yeast starter

[swallace]

Hello brewers!

I'm in the process of making a yeast starter. I boiled 1000ml of water and 100g of DME, however I only ended up with about 400ml of wort after a 15 min boil. Is this normal?

I don't have a refractometer and if I take a reading with my hydrometer there will not be much left.

Thanks!

 

[MalFet]

I'm in the process of making a yeast starter. I boiled 100ml of water and 100g of DME, however I only ended up with about 400ml of wort after a 15 min boil. Is this normal?

100mL of water and 100g of DME produced 400mL of wort? I suspect that the problem is that you are Jesus, and thus not bound by the laws of physics.

 

[swallace]

fixed.. i meant 1000ml of water

 

[MalFet]

fixed.. i meant 1000ml of water

Ah, in that case...

If you are fairly confident in your measurements, your gravity is way too high...on the order of 1.100 or so. That's not normal. You want to end up with 1L of starter per 100g of DME, and if you are boiling off that quickly you should turn your burner way, way down.

Add more water and bring it back to a boil briefly. For 100g of DME, you want 1L of starter.

 

[NordeastBrewer77]

fixed.. i meant 1000ml of water

the problem is that you are Jesus, and thus not bound by the laws of physics.

I still think Malfet may be onto something..... 1000 ml + ~100g of DME and 1000 ml of water should net you at least 1000 ml of wort. Did you have a boil over?

BTW, Malfet, that is so worthy of a sigline quote!

 

[SkipperNC]

I honestly don't boil my starters that long, but you are shooting for a 1.030-1.040 gravity. Those first numbers are what it takes to hit that (1000ml water, 100g DME) so that means you boiled off and are now higher gravity, you would need to add water to hit your target.

You don't want to stress the yeast in a starter, this the fairly low gravity target. Give them food, and let them reproduce.

 

[swallace]

No boil-over although it was close the majority of the time.

Well, I'll chalk it up to practice then, I already added the yeast. I'm terrible at chemistry admittedly, I don't know why I didn't realize that the end goal is 1000ml of wort.

Thanks for the help.