Yeast Starter Kit every time? most of the time?

For a while I used a growler that I would shake every now and again, that worked well. For Christmas I got a stir plate and 2L flask which I have used the last couple of batches. Prior to Christmas my previous 3 brews were all in the 1.040-1.050 range so I didn’t make a starter but I did oxygenate and always had fermentation within 24 hours. The last brew was 1.070 and I used a ~1.5L starter that had been on the stir plate for about 15 hours. The room temperature was around 64 and the wort temperature was not that far off so not super hot but I had signs of fermentation (slow bubbles) within 45 minutes and within 2 hours some very vigorous fermentation. I also had krausen coming out of the airlock for about 24 hours which is unusual as I use plastic buckets to ferment in. I would recommend starters!

[quote=“Nighthawk”][quote=“Tom_B”]
Absolutely. After boiling the starter wort and transferring it to the mason jars, I process the jars like preserves. They all get a 20 minute boil in the canning pot. More work at the front end; less work a few days before brew day.[/quote]

Wort is not acidic enough for water batch canning. It needs to be pressure canned. [/quote]

You could probably make it work if you throw something like citric acid in the mix to get the pH down.

ETA: I’m kind of curious how big a risk this really ends up being, all told. If you’re decanting the starter before pitching, and whatever’s left is getting diluted into 5 gallons of beer, and you aren’t drinking the beer at too terribly high a rate, then how much toxin could you really be dosing yourself with?

Not sure I want to volunteer to be the one to find out, though. Botulism gives me the willies.

UPDATE:

I ended up ordering what appears (based on reviews) to be a really nice 2000 mL flask from amazon. I came so close multiple times to just getting a 1 gal jug instead, but for some reason I wanted the flask so i got it. wasted $20 or so between the cost of that and the jug but oh well.

I also spent 2 hours at 3am friday night watching youtube videos of hwo to build your own stir plate. doesn’t look overly complicated, and much better than $100 or so from a store (although i will admit I have not shopped around much). No idea if I will try to build one, buy one, or just give it the old swizzle everytime I walk by method