ANOTHER STARTER QUESTION

Call me dumb but i have another question about making and using starters. Its been told to me a thousand times that starters make better brew. Heres what i dont understand… White labs sells vails of yeast that suppose to be the right amount for a 5 gallon batch of beer. when i make a starter i usally cold crash it to let it settle out and sometimes it may sit in the frig for 2 weeks. Then when im ready to brew i take it out and equalize the temp of the yeast to match the temp of the wort and i decant and pitch. With this being said , y make a starter if u only using the yeast cake left at the bottom of the flask. All there is in the vails is yeast cake. Couldnt u just buy more than one vail and do away with the trouble of making a starter. Why not pitch the starter while its still in active fermentation. Like I said it may be a dumb question but im doing my best to grasp this whole starter thing better.

Sure, if money is no object, just buy more yeast and pitch it. Way easier. But at $6-7 per dose, it is about the single biggest expense in your beer, depending on how much and what grains you use.

The reason you do not pitch a starter in active fermentation is that you are making a very bad beer when you make a starter. It is not being bittered and is fermenting at room temps which likely are producing off flavors. With a small starter, I do not think it would be too bad, but with a 2 liter or 4 liter starter, that nasty taste could be a bad thing to add to your beer

Yep, the cost of a vial/pack of yeast is more that the cost of some DME, or saved leftover wort from an AG batch.

You could make the starter like normal. Then on brew day decant. Then add a pint of the new beer to the yeast. Let that get rocking for a couple hours and pitch in the fermenter. You should not have to much issue with off flavors. And you will have the increased cell count.

Looks like your question has already been answered but I’ll toss in another bit as well. Starters don’t only increase the cell count of the yeast package, they make sure you have a high viable cell count. If you buy two or three packages to pitch you are spending a bunch of money and depending on the age of the yeast packages you may well have a lowered number of viable and healthy cells. Starters make sure you have a bunch of healthy cells that are ready to take on your wort.

Thanks guys, Makes more since now. Most or almost all the beer i make is around 1.045 or less. Im not big on strong beer. Although I can consume a keg every 2 weeks. Do i still need to make starters for gravity levels that low. I normally do a liter for 5 gallon batches. Is this big enough?

It’s not necessary to make a starter for an ale at 1.045 OG. That’s really my cut off but I’ve gone up to 1.050 when I was feeling lazy. I wyeast pack or vial of yeast within a month of it’s manufacture date would be enough.

99% of all the beer i brew is about 5%abv or less. Would it make a better beer if i made a starter or would i be wasting my time?

[quote=“shawn2974”]99% of all the beer i brew is about 5%abv or less. Would it make a better beer if i made a starter or would i be wasting my time?[/quote]Starter isn’t necessary at OG < 1.050 but if I was going to just pitch one vial into 5.5 gallons I would make sure that the wort was sufficiently aerated (I use O2 and would add 1L or so).

thanks shade, I wanna learn more about starters anyway. So as long as im making 5 gal batches and <1.050 OG I would nt need starters but a 1 liter starter would be great. OH and well areated