Beer Forum

Im going to be brewing a Dubbel this weekend and of course I will making a starter.
Its a high gravity beer and Mr. Malty's recomends a 2 liter starter.... I am acustomed to making a half liter sized starter.... my question is do I just ramp up my regular starter to a 2 liter size or should I be adding more DME to compensate for the higher gravity? thanks in advance!

josh

Scale everything up equally.

scale up the size of the wort, but not the gravity. The gravity of your starter wort should be between 1.030 and 1.040. You don't want to stress the yeast in the starter before it even hits the wort in your fermenter.

Wayne

Cool will do ... I guess I'll owe you guys a beer!.... And to bugeater.. It's like getting a reply back from a movie star! Nah but really I've been going thru the archives and I always like when you're on... What a nice dude!

He's just as nice in person too.

I have a second part to the question... I'm going to brew this on Sunday... Should I make up my starter Friday or today...

Jbug wrote:I have a second part to the question... I'm going to brew this on Sunday... Should I make up my starter Friday or today...

You can just make the starter the morning of your brew day. This will wake the yeast up and get them going to "Brew Strong". Works well, or you can make the starter several days in advance and ferment the starter all the way out. Chill and on the day of brewing decant off the beer on top of the yeast and then wake up the yeast with fresh wort on top of the yeast. This really propagates the yeast. For lagers this is the way to go.

For ales the starter done on the day of brewing or the night before is just fine. Just MHO.

Thanks MT... I'll be making my starter Saturday evening... I'll let everyone know how quick the yeast get going...
I used the NB neobritiania on ( pint sized starter) my last batch of pale ale and managed to only have about 2 hours of lag!... I was impressed! That is a great strain if anyone hasn't used it yet...