Beer Forum

OK for my 20th batch I'm going to brew the British IPA in JZ's Brewing Classic Styles. It will have a SG of around 1.064 and I've decided to try a liquid yeast for the first time. For the next day or so I'll be building a stir plate using a computer fan and rare earth magnets from an old hard drive. I love hacking stuff together - weeeeeeeee

Using JZ's pitching rate calculator it indicates I need a 1.2L starter if I use a stir plate. Bitchin' fine. And I'll use JZ's guide to making a starter. Check.

My question is I see two camps on how to actually pitch the starter:
- One says just chuck the starter in when its at high krausen
- Other says put it in the fridge - yeast settle - decant the wort and then pitch

Any concensus - comments - other thoughts - wish me good luck - etc

I'll be brewing this coming weekend

It's all a balancing act but the end goal having enough healthy yeast to ferment your beer out properly:

If the amount of liquid in your starter won't make a flavor difference to your end beer, pitch the starter at high krausen and it'll take off and kick a lot of ass.

If the amount of liquid in your starter is enough to make a flavor difference in your end beer, chill and decant most of the liquid (you'll need to leave enough liquid to swirl your yeast back up in to suspension before pitching into your fermentor) before going in to your wort.

Let's say one of my beers coming up needs a seven-liter starter. I don't want to put two gallons of oxidized wort into 6 gallons of beer. I'll pour most of the liquid off (after letting the yeast settle completely) and pour it in to the fermentor.

Even better, you could just make your starter in your fermentation vessel so you don't have the extra transfer/pour step. That's the plan for my upcoming "need a bunch of yeast" beers. Chill it for a few days to drop the yeast out of suspension and siphon off as much of the liquid as possible. Then I'll just throw the freshly cooled wort on top.

Edit: I just reread your post to make sure I answered your question. If you're brewing this weekend and only need a 1.2 liters of starter, I'd just make your starter 18-20 hours before the time you anticipate you'll have the next day's wort at pitching temps. It'll probably be at/near high krausen about 18-ish hours after making your starter and it'll be ready to pitch in to your cooled wort.

Thanks for the info Wutz - my initial take was if you have a lighter beer with more delicate attributes you would always decant to minimize taste issues. I guess the same would go as you mentioned if you have a large volume starter. That is one reason I'm going to do the stirrer route which according to the Mr Malty pitching rate calculator will give you the most yeast per volume of starter

I usually buy a vile and make a batch of beers increasing in gravity.
For the first beer, I make a starter ahead of time to get the correct amount of yeast. I then chill it down and decant before I pitch.

If I remember on brew day... I take a 500 ml sample off the kettle after 30 minutes and chill quickly.
I then decant my starter and add this chilled wort to the starter and put it on a stir plate. I'm waking up the yeast and getting them ready.
By the time the boil finishes and I've chilled and tranferred to my fermentation vessel the starter is woke back up. I then pitch the whole then.

With that being said...
My last brew was a 1.049 batch, I pitched 2 week old 130 ml harvested yeast without a starter and it was fermenting in 12 hours.

JD