Made a yeast starter 3 days ago out of WLP 001 slurry, but can’t brew til Friday morning (How time, she gets away). This seems too long between start and pitch. Was going to chill it tonight for ~36 hours when I’ll decant, brew, and pitch.
Thoughts?? Main concern is yeast will suffer, and maybe I’ve defeated the purpose of a starter. Am I totally boned? O.G. will be about 1080. Thanks for all/any insight.
Unless you intended to pitch the entire starter at high krausen, you’re doing it the normal way (ferment out, chill, decant, pitch).
+1 Should work out fine.
Is it necessary to chill, decant, then pitch? I just did my first starter and pitched the whole lot 36 hours after starting it.
Also, my first starter was with dry yeast. Will this cause problems or just wasn’t a needed step?
With dry yeast you did not need to make a starter. If your starter finished out, depending on the size you made, and you pitched the whole thing, you just added some potentially bad beer to your nice fresh wort. It “could” affect the final flavor.
So you decant the bad beer off and then add fresh wort before pitching. Why is the first beer “bad”?
Relative to the rest of the wort, it would be un-hopped, mashed using a different grist, low-gravity, over-pitched, and oxidized.
You would decant the liquid off the top leaving enough to swirl the remaining yeast into suspension, then pour in.
Maybe it is not bad beer that is made, but it was boiled for a very short time (I assume), was overly aerated, has no hops for bittering and likely started weak. Nothing really wrong with it and it won’t hurt you, but it was sacrificial wort for the purpose of raising yeast, nothing more.
thanks for all the inputs. Only been using starters for past ~5,6 beers and will never go back, just learning the ropes as it were. “Shadetree”- you were talking about pitching @ high krausen- That’s all I’ve done to date- heard that was highest yield of healthy yeast. What are benefits of doing it this way( ferm, decant, pitch).
If you’re not using a stir plate, the starter beer isn’t oxidized and the volume is likely small enough to not have a flavor impact on the beer, so there’s no downside to pitching at high krausen and the benefit is that you’re pitching yeast at it’s most active. If you’re using a stirplate, you’ll need to decide if the volume of the starter beer is large enough to impact the big batch if it’s oxidized (likely not unless it’s a delicate style).
Thanks for the replies (and sharing this thread). No stirplate on mine, just shook it every few hours. I am going to liquid yeasts from now on and plan to continue on with starters. Thanks again for the tips!
You should be able to keep a finished starter in the fridge for up to 2 weeks without a problem.
