Pitch starter at high krausen, or when finished and settled?

morethanworts · Oct 22, 2013

I read conflicting views on this, which seem to divide roughly into the following:

a) Pitch into main batch at high krausen: you want the yeast to have multiplied, but still be 'highly active'.

no...

b) Pitching at high krausen is interrupting the yeast and asking them to revert to another growth phase to cope with the new (big) wort. You're better to let it finish, chill, decant, bring up to temp and pitch.

I've added a poll, but would be grateful for any comments backing up your theory. :thumb:

pittsy · Oct 22, 2013

Both are good , first is best if you have a small starter and it is fermented at the beer fermenting temp cause usually ale yeast starters ferment at 22/24c and lager is 18c (yes even when lager will be 12c etc ) which will mean the starter itself may have some funky flavours so for that reason and if you have a large starter (4 to 5 L) decanting the yeast off starter is better .
I like to do a small starter (around 1 to 2L) and i'll ferment it close or exactly as ferment temp for brew and when it's at day 1 to 2 pitch it directly into brew at high krausen .
If not then i'll decant it on brew day (from fridge ) and after 30 mins of boil add 500ml of wort to yeast starter to get it going then pitch into wort .

Good Ed · Oct 22, 2013

as pittsy says.

I always decant off the spent wort; as a general guide if your starter volume is more than 5% of your beer volume, then you should always decant off the spent wort, and do as pittsy says on brewday, another thing I learnt off Aleman :thumb:

morethanworts · Oct 22, 2013

I guess I'm going to have to decant if I want to get rid of the starter's uber-funk. :thumb:

I did do the method you describe on the brewday my recent AG#1 (OG 1.085 with just a 1.25L starter of WY3787). Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but there seemed to be a sort of 'double action', with a quick <12hr visible start to krausen, but then a slight lull before a massive tidal wave that took a 20L brew over the top of a 33L FV! ...which is all really good, but it took 3 weeks to ferment out, even raised to 24C and stirred every 2 days from week 2. (I took your advice with the stirring Pittsy and it kept things moving well after that, cheers.). So maybe I just needed a bigger starter. Mind you , it got down to 1.009.

I've done a 1.25L and then 2.5L step this time, which should be settled by Friday's brew, but hadn't decided whether to set it off again first on brew day. Thanks for the info.

brewtim · Oct 22, 2013

Don't forget the 3rd option......split batch yeast starter technique (I made up the name, but its a valid option)........

If you need big yeast for a big brew say 50 litres of a high gravity ale or 25 litre high gravity lager then you're gonna need about 800+ billion cells? Try growing that in a conical and stirplate!

So what you do is build a starter to a reasonable level, then split the brewday batch into two, pitch yeast into half the batch then 24 hours later pour the rest of the batch into the fermenter, giving you enough yeast growth for the size and strength of the batch, apparently it works. Just like a massive stepped starter. Also it's OK to aerate the second batch before pouring into the fermenter.

There's a basic brewing podcast from a while back about German brewing techniques and this is one of them (there's probably a German word for it).

So the third option would be to pitch after 24 hours (which might also be high Krausen)?

brewtim · Oct 22, 2013

morethanworts said:
I've done a 1.25L and then 2.5L step this time, which should be settled by Friday's brew, but hadn't decided whether to set it off again first on brew day. Thanks for the info.

One thing I hadn't taken into account when using Belgian yeast for the first time recently was the amount of time it would take for the starter yeast to settle in a fridge at 4 C, my English ale yeasts have settled within 12 hours but the Belgian hadn't settled fully after 24 hours, I really needed a minimum 24-48 hours to get the starter wort clear. In the end I delayed pitching by a few hours and had the majority of the slurry settled, poured off the spent wort into another conical which has settled another layer (to be saved for a future brew).

Pitch starter at high krausen, or when finished and settled?

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