should I do a starter on first brew?

[astrobrew]

Hi

I have a summer ale I will be making for my first beer. I have a smack pack. Should I do a starter or just use the smack pack as is?

Thanks

Steve

[BDawg]

First - congrats and welcome to the hobby!

Nah, I'd say just smack it the night before and get the rest of your process down first.
You can always do a starter in a batch or 2 when you have the rest of the process down and are more comfortable. No need to add another infection source in your first brew.
Good Luck!

[astrobrew]

Thanks for the advice. We are passing a brew kit around at work. One guy has his at the bottled stage and he passed it on to me.

Steve

[beltbuckle]

I'd do a starter only if you want to and feel comfortable doing it. If you want to skip it, no problem, especially on your first brew. With the kit being passed around does that mean you get a fermenter and everything else needed?

[astrobrew]

Yes the kit has every thing you need but bottles and ingredients and I bought all that and I made a chiller.

Thanks again

Steve

[11amas]

+1 on KISS, the last thing you want is an infection; an underpitch will be a minor worry. You shouldn't try a high gravity beer or lager this early in the game anyway so a smackpack or WL vial will be plenty of cells. I would focus on pales, ambers, wheats, maybe a stout or porter. Stay easy at first because once you start getting tricky you might get frustrated...been there, not fun when your "beer pipeline" gets lean and you dump a batch.

[WAKeele]

Not to hijack a tread, but it seems like something good to discuss for a first-timer.
I've never done a starter before and finally decided to give it a try. I actually was doing this after a beer is fermenting, but since I underpitched and it's such a high gravity beer, it seemed like a better idea that just tossing a vial in. This my local shop sucks, they had to order some yeast. My dumb ass forgot to specify I wanted more than one package--Wyeast smacker (I wanted White Labs, but they claim they can't get it). Anyways, fermentation was going fine--OG ~1.130 (I know, I'm no holds bars). I'm making my starter by the MoreBeer instructions for the most part. I was just going to do 1L instead of 2L. I used 1 cup DME, a pinch of nutrient and ~1oz of brown sugar (part of the sugar additions for this recipe). Well things seems to be good the next morning and I was going to pitch when I got home later that day. I get home and it's completely dead. I tried getting to the temp up a little to see if it would help but nothing. So how I can underpitch higher gravity lagers and get good fermentation and end with a good product and not get a damn yeast starter to take?!? I'm thinking it might have burned through it before I had time to pitch. Sounds like I need to read up on this business more. Too bad school eats up 95% of my day. Stupid science major.

[astrobrew]

Update I finished the first brewing session. I had a lag on the ferment of 6hrs but then took off. In 18hrs is has been working at a good pace and about 2inchs of foam. I missed my target gravity of 1.041 the actual value I had was 1.034. The chiller cooled the wort to 68 degrees in 20 min and pitched at 70 degrees. The carboy stays at about 70 to 71 day and night. I hope I was clean enough. I used star san.

Steve