Starter Mixup - Learn From My Mistake?

[DeepEllumBrews]

Boiled my usual 1/2 cup DME and pint of water on the stove. I didn't have enough ice on hand for the ice bath so I put the small pot in the freezer. After 30min I checked it out and some of it was already frozen. D'OH! So, in the spirit of experimentation, I brought it to a boil again and this time let it cool to room temp on the stove. Pitched the yeast at about 12:00am last night. This morning, no action yeast is settled at the bottom still.

I usually get action on my starters within a few hours. I stirred this up again but I don't think anything is going to happen. Anyone know what happened to the wort through the extreme boil > freeze > boil? Has anyone done this before or am I the only

I'm going to do another one tonight and put off brewday til tomorrow.


Also, when you guys decant off the beer, do you leave a little in there to stir up the yeast to make it easier to pour into the starter wort? I ended up using a VERY small amount of water to stir it up. Just trying to not leave out any factors.

[brewinhard]

Not sure what happened to the starter, but I typically decant the majority of spent wort off the yeast after crash cooling the starter. I do leave a small amount of wort in the starter to be able to resuspend ALL of the yeast before swirling and pitching into my fermenter.

[DeepEllumBrews]

I was talking about pitching into the starter actually. I wash and store my yeast in small mason jars. These have been in the fridge for about a week. When I decant off the top portion of "beerwater" I needed a touch more to rise the yeast. I've never had a problem with this before. I have to assume that something happened during the freeze?

[herbaljoe]

Freezing your starter wort and reboiling before pitching yeast into it shouldn't cause any problems at all. I frequently end up doing this for various reasons (usually because I forget that I have the wort in the freezer and it sometimes freezes solid). I would look toward your yeast in the mason jars as your potential problem for the delay. In any case, it's pretty likely that your starter will take off soon and you won't have anything to worry about assuming there isn't any contamination.

[DeepEllumBrews]

Thanks man.

[DeepEllumBrews]

Just got a call from the wife who's off today (lucky) and she says the starter is going fairly strong. Just a slow start apparently, I'm not used to that.

[brewinhard]

I just whipped up a 3 L. starter for my oktoberfest (WY oktoberfest lager blend) and it took almost 35 hrs. for noticeable fermentation to occur. No worries, as it is raging now (at least as much as lager yeasts do). I did have to raise the temp from 66 to low 70's for the yeast to take off though. Did learn one thing more though when brewing with lager yeasts - it is best to let the packet completely swell before making the starter. This gives the yeast a chance to wake up and be activated a bit. Never really had that problem with ale yeasts though.