Making myself 2 small batches of Kolsch. Trying to tweak my recipe before I go with a big batch. Also I only have 1 Wyeast packet at the moment (and am a little impatient considering more are coming in the mail).
Ok, so I found this old Wyeast packet that I didn’t even know I had (Manufacture date was April 15th of this year) and I’m determined to save it, if possible.
Yesterday afternoon I made myself some tasty starter wort out of some leftover gold malt syrup, honey, raw cane sugar, and yeast nutrient. I took the pack out of the fridge and smacked it around noon. By 5pm I had pitched into my 2 liter starter wort, aerated with O2 and gave it a good shake every 30 minutes or so until I went to bed.
This morning there’s no krausen, a thick layer of what I hope is yeast (it’s low flocc which I don’t have a lot of experience with so it looks a little creamy/slimy but smells fantastic). When I shake it I get some mild off gassing, but nothing to write home about.
I was planning to let this one ferment out, cold crash, decant spent wort and pitch my slurry into a 2.7 Gallon batch.
After the primary fermentation has subsided I want to rack to secondary in my lagering chamber and repitch a second tweaked batch on my original yeast cake.
Do we think this is adequate to get me going? I read somewhere that I should be doing this starter 6 days in advance because of it’s age. Should I add some (ELDME) wort after decanting and let it ferment to high krausen or just stick to the original plan? Do I need to wait 6 days?
Thanks in advance.
