Beer Forum

Yeast Starter Idea

Lately I have been trying out the 'no chill' method, popping the lid on at the end of the boil and giving the beer 12-24 hours to naturally chill. I was thinking that with this timeframe, if I was to pull 1-2 liters out of the kettle, I could chill this small amount, make a starter, then 24 hours later when the work is chilled, dump in the starter and the beer is good to go!

Any thoughts on this?

Thanks!

The obvious comment is that this is a recipe for DMS formation.

I don't see why it wouldn't work. The no-chill method has been fairly well tested. I did 2 no-chills just to try it and entered the beer for judging and DMS was not detected, but did do 90 minute boils. The other thing is the gravity of the wort... a starter does the best job at around 1.040, so if you are close to that should work great but if you are brewing something like a barleywine it may be a bit too much.

ajdelange wrote:The obvious comment is that this is a recipe for DMS formation.

only according to book theory. in practice i, and a lot of aussie brewers no chill all my beers in a cube. i have entered several of my beers into competition and never been pulled up for dms. had other problems but not dms. as for the op that is a very sound idea. even if you have to water down the starter a bit to keep it in the right gravity range it could help aclimatise the yeast to youre wort and if you dont decant then the flavour profile should be a better match.

It will work but my personal preference still leans toward doing a traditional 1.040 starter with water and DME instead of having all the hops and other compounds that you would get from a boiled wort. I usually let my starters build up for 48-72 hours so the 12-24 hour starter seems a little rushed. Depending on your yeast strain 12-24 might not be enough time for some of the slower yeasts to get off the ground.

With all that being said it does seem like something worth trying if you were stepping up your starter before pitching. I would probably get 1-2 liters of your wort once you start boiling but before your first hop addition and mix that into your starter. If this shows promising results then you can easily save yourself a lot of money on buying DME for starters.

I figure with the wort matching the beer its being pitched into, I would be able to pitch directly to the batch during active fermentation. Usually the downside of pitching the starter during active fermentation is that you cant decant the starter, with this method that wouldn't be a issue.

I'm gonna be brewing later today, I'll test it out today!

Cheers!

i think you'll have good results, let us know how it goes.

would be interesting to have a brew strong on DMS: Theory vs. practice, with some real side-by-side test brews as I agree the theory says DMS would be a major problem with the no-chill method but in practice (personal experience and second-hand) it doesn't pan out.