So just made a starter

Covrich · Oct 2, 2015

Hopefully this will go alight

got my wyeast out the fridge and gave it a smack about 1 hour before I did the cook.

put about 120 DME in 1 liter of water and boiled for 10-15 mins.. Smell reminded me of when I did boiling extracts, made me reaslie the smell is so much different with mashed grain

cooled in the sink and put in a sanitised 2 liter pop bottle.. opened yeast packet.. weird enough despite hitting it a few times only one sachet had burst another was entact so i used my sanitised scissors and snipped and added that in to my bottle.. screwed top on i put the bottle outside to make sure it cools a tiny bit more but will loosen it up a bit..

just got to wait really and see whether its all okay or whether I just chucked ÃÂ£7 down the sink..

Its a london wyeast so I hope to harvest some

MyQul · Oct 2, 2015

I made a starter today too (well its really a step up) from some mauribrew 514 yeast trub I harvested . I then put the trub into 2L of starter wort last week and split in half. I obviously didn't split it exactly in half because one pop bottle had more yeast in it than the other that's why I'm stepping it. I've done almost exactly the same as you have except I used about 105g of DME. It's going like a train at the mo

Covrich · Oct 2, 2015

How long did yous take to kick off.. I don;t know why I have this genereal impression they kind of get going quickish (I only pitched 20 mins ago so don't expect anything yet)

MyQul · Oct 2, 2015

Kicksed of really quick, like in about 2 hours or so. I did pitch the yeast at about 30C though. I take it you've shaken the pop bottle loads

Covrich · Oct 2, 2015

MyQul said:
Kicksed of really quick, like in about 2 hours or so. I did pitch the yeast at about 30C though. I take it you've shaken the pop bottle loads

Yup.. I see people shake or swirl the bottles often too.

Such a small thing compared to an AG but still interesting and another process under your belt to learn.. I might be picking your brains in the coming weeks about harvesting (can you harvest in pop bottles too as I see people stricly use glass?)

MyQul · Oct 2, 2015

If I harvest trub I put it in glass jars but grow it/make starters using pop bottles. It's too late now but I would of put the smakpak contents in 2L and split it and pitched half tommorow and used the other half to put in another 2L of starter wort to grow, split that in half etc.

You can of course harvest your trub so no real loss

Covrich · Oct 3, 2015

I thought I left the seal loose last night but this morning the bottle was like a cricket bat.. loosened it up and struggled to keep the foam down..

Yeast is starting to settle to the bottom.. I am worried with the pet bottles it will get stuck in the dimples and not pitch

clibit · Oct 3, 2015

Give it a good shake.

Covrich · Oct 3, 2015

Yup that did it:lol: well every few hours I am giving it a vigorous gyrate (if that is the correct term)

mirsultankhan · Oct 5, 2015

hi i hope i am not jumping in here but I also made a starter today, 1.5 litres with 150g Light DEM. I was wondering how much can I save for storage and doing another starter and how much should I pitch?

clibit · Oct 5, 2015

Use Mr Malty to work out starter sizes:

http://www.mrmalty.com/calc/calc.html

this is a useful how to that shows you one way to split a liquid yeast:

http://uk-homebrew.tripod.com/id45.html

mirsultankhan · Oct 5, 2015

clibit said:
Use Mr Malty to work out starter sizes:

http://www.mrmalty.com/calc/calc.html

this is a useful how to that shows you one way to split a liquid yeast:

http://uk-homebrew.tripod.com/id45.html

yeah pretty awesome, he makes a lot of batches at the one time. i plan simply to take a little from the starter and store that to make another starter and so on and use the rest for the beer, I plan maybe saving thirty percent, use 1 liter for the brew and save .5 litre for another time

clibit · Oct 5, 2015

mirsultankhan said:
yeah pretty awesome, he makes a lot of batches at the one time. i plan simply to take a little from the starter and store that to make another starter and so on and use the rest for the beer, I plan maybe saving thirty percent, use 1 liter for the brew and save .5 litre for another time

That should work fine. If you got your malt sums right.

mirsultankhan · Oct 5, 2015

clibit said:
That should work fine. If you got your malt sums right.

yes i used the brewersfriend calculator, OG was 1036, Volume 1.5 litres, 154g Light DME, 11g Safale-04, should be good to go

I only plan to let it sit on the stir plate for two days though, I think you mentioned elsewhere clibit that this was when the yeast was at its freshest.

mirsultankhan · Oct 6, 2015

clibit said:
That should work fine. If you got your malt sums right.

Hi Clibit sorry to hassle you again, Do i let the yeast settle and throw away the DME or just toss both yeast and DME into the wort?

MyQul · Oct 6, 2015

mirsultankhan said:
Hi Clibit sorry to hassle you again, Do i let the yeast settle and throw away the DME or just toss both yeast and DME into the wort?

you can do either as long as the spent wort is no more than 5% of the wort your chucking it into

mirsultankhan · Oct 6, 2015

MyQul said:
you can do either as long as the spent wort is no more than 5% of the wort your chucking it into

Its one litre going into twenty litres, I brewed short by three litres again! deliberately this time.

MyQul · Oct 6, 2015

So that's 5%. So you can just chuck the whole thing in if you want

mirsultankhan · Oct 10, 2015

MyQul said:
So that's 5%. So you can just chuck the whole thing in if you want

Yes! But alas I wussed out and poured away the DME and pitched only the yeast. Was amazed at how much that little 1.5 litre starter and ghetto stirplate produced.

I have been using exclusively dried yeast but after some research it seems that live yeast is better and the best of all may be brewlabs yeast slopes. Hopefully these different strains may impart different flavours, really excited about trying to culture some up

MyQul · Oct 10, 2015

mirsultankhan said:
Yes! But alas I wussed out and poured away the DME and pitched only the yeast. Was amazed at how much that little 1.5 litre starter and ghetto stirplate produced.

I have been using exclusively dried yeast but after some research it seems that live yeast is better and the best of all may be brewlabs yeast slopes. Hopefully these different strains may impart different flavours, really excited about trying to culture some up

I dont even use a stir plate, just a pop bottle that I shake periodically and it still produces an amazing amout of yeast.

I pitched a starter today. I had a go a pitching at high krausen for the first time too. I did pitch at 26C (Im still using warm weather yeast as my brewing corner is still 23C) but it started fermenting in 3 hours!

So just made a starter

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