I’m making the Belgium Tripel using Wyeast but remain a little concerned about my yeast starter. It never foamed or showed much activity; I made it yesterday then periodically tapped the bottom of the flask to “wake up” any cells, doing this based on no actual information stating this works or even wakes anything up.
Regardless, there is a sediment on the bottom, is there something else I should look out for or do to ensure a healthy, sugar eating yeast?
Oh, and when I do tap or swirl the flask it foams up then settles quickly.
Tapping isn’t going to do much. Swirling, some what aggressively, adds oxygen to the starter. Oxygen is a good thing for the starter so give it a shake 3+ times a day. Oxygen is not a good thing for finished beer, so don’t shake your carboy except for the 1st day.
The foam when you swirl it is CO2 coming out of solution. CO2= fermentation. So the yeast are awake and working.
So the CO2 is a good sign, now what if when I pitch the yeast today and there is little fermentation going on, is there a way to revive it? I just had a bad experience with inactive yeast recently so now I don’t want this Tipel to go bad.
