Starter questions

Do you have the basic equipment and supplies to make a starter? Or I guess I should ask, what equipment do you have for making a starter?

 

Ideally you would have a stir plate and a flask. Then you could make up some wort (1L) around 1.040 specific gravity. To this you would add the smack pack and let it stir for at least two days to grow up more cells.

You could also do it the ghetto way and use a sanitized mason jar or some similar container. Add the wort and put some tin foil over the top (make sure you sanitize everything) and just swirl the jar every time you get a chance for a few days.

Either way when all the growth has taken place put the starter in the fridge and let the yeast settle to the bottom. Pour the liquid down the sink and use the yeast to brew!

 

It's the number of yeast cells per volume of wort.

The older the yeast, the less viable cells you will be starting with, thus the less cells you'll end up with for a given volume of starter wort.

http://www.mrmalty.com/calc/calc.html

 

Vessel -- see below

Pitching Rate -- how much yeast you should pitch for your batch in billions of cells

Production Date -- yeast become less viable as they become older...there are online calculators that estimate what the cell count is based on the date on the smack pack. Mr. Malty (below) has this built in, as does BeerSmith.

You determine the cell count by using the math that other people have already done for us! Mr. Malty's calculator tells you how many cells you need, what the viability of your pack is, and how big a starter you need to produce roughly the needed number of cells. Be sure to switch the drop down to "Intermittent Shaking" or whatever if you use the approach that I detailed below.

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http://www.mrmalty.com/calc/calc.html -- use this to figure out how much 1.040 wort you need based on the beer's gravity, batch size, and age of the yeast.

http://i.imgur.com/j3JTn.jpg -- use this for the steps you need to take

I did starters before I had a stir plate/flask by boiling wort in a stock pot, chilling the pot in an ice bath, and then pouring into a growler (I used 1 gallon growler to have a little more space, but I've made them in a 1/2 gal growler...really depends on your batch size/OG). Use sanitized foil on top of the growler in a dark place, and shake it really well every time you think about it.

Make sure you sanitize well throughout the process...an infected starter will infect a batch!

 

Northern brewer has an awesome video on the page with their starter flask. I would hyperlink it, but my phone is pretty ghetto, or I'm just too dumb... anyway I found it extremely helpful.

 

starters are not really a mystery, but like most everything else nobody is born with this knowledge. theprocess is something you can find all over the net and here as well so i am going to add a bit of background.

you know yeast make beer and you know that yeast cells divide, 2 become 4, 4 become 8, 8 become 16 and so forth. until there are billions and billions of cells working on your unfermented wort. you could make beer with one yeast cell. in theory the one cell will divide divide divide and eventually your wort will become beer.

you know yeast will work with or without oxygen (aerobic or anaerobic). the growth phase occurs much more rapidly with oxygen present. so brewers shake or aerate their carboy initially, then leave it alone and avoid oxygen after fermentation has started. the yeast will use all the oxygen present as they divide. they will not produce very much in the way of "beer" as they go about the business of dividing, colonizing. the yeast will continue to populate until they have used up the oxygen and then they will get down to making beer.

a starter is a deliberate attempt to make as many cells as possible before they are introduced into your wort. the more yeast you have for fermentation, the better the beer. there is no danger in having too much yeast (in theory and mostly accurate for homebrewers).

if you attempt to ferment your wort with too few yeast cells, the yeast will be stressed and will likely do some undesirable things as they reproduce. off flavors, unusual fermentations, sluggish fermentation etc.

so, with this knowledge, remember that

-a starter is an attempt to make yeast cells, alot of healthy and vibrant yeast cells. a starter is not the same as making beer. your starter should have a gravity of 1040 or so. this is ideal for the yeast as it provides enough fuel to facilitate colony growth but not so much that they get weak making beer.
-a starter requires plenty of oxygen. yeast divide well with oxygen present. a stir plate will help with this, or just gently shake or swirl your starter frequently to keep the yeast in suspension.
- an airlock will prevent air from getting into your starter. a foam stopper, or a piece of foil, will prevent fruit flys etc from getting in and allows oxygen to get in as well. remember, you're not making beer.
-starters can be "stepped up". make one liter of 1040 starter, add that to another liter of 1040, and so on.

making a starter is easy and a real good way to improve your beer, big beers especially. a single smack pack is plenty for most beers, though it does not always meet the calculated ideal yeast colony size. keep this in mind when you read mrmalty. remember that homebrewers have made very good beer forever without the benefit of a yeast calculator. mrmalty is a great resource, but it is in no way the last word in homebrewing.
Cheers.

 

1L or 1/2 gallon growler? 1L might be a little small. 1/2 gallon growler (standard size) or gallon are better choices unless you want to step up your starter, which is just more work. A stir plate will pay for itself in not a lot of time because you'll pay 1/2 as much for every batch (you can DIY one on the cheap or buy one that stirstarters.com / rebelbrewing.com are slanging for a decent price if you're not handy).

 

I purchased: http://www.williamsbrewing.com/STIRSTARTER-FOR-1000-TO-2000MM-FLASKS-P2520.aspx
$43.00 was a cheap investment in the grand scheme of what I spend my money on. I assume if I take care of it it will last.
Picked up a 2000L flask on Amazon for about $20.

It is not necessary, but makes better, easier, and more consistent starters. You could also follow the directions above without a stirplate. You could also just pitch the 2 packs.

 

You actually get very little yeast propagation in a 1 Liter starter with the commercial packs and vials we use, you might go from 100 billion to 150 billion cells with a very fresh pack and letting the starter sit. You need 260 billion or so cells for your beer, that takes a 3.5 liter starter with no stir plate or shaking, and about 1.5 liters with a stir plate.

 

I'd like to take a step back and make sure you got some of the basics. A starter is just making a small batch of (unhopped) wort to grow yeast so you have an appropriate amount for a healthy pitch. It's usually a ballpark number and not horribly accurate--especially since you don't have a stir plate. The numbers are pretty forgiving on a homebrew level, but the efforts of a starter are well worth it for a good batch of beer--especially beers higher than 1.050.



Pitch rates are often broken down into # billion cells of yeast/ml of wort.

The yeast birthday/expiration day generally tell you how many yeast cells you have left of your 100 billion that they give you when they package it. They start to die off after a few weeks. If you make a starter with 100 billion cells, you'll end up with a bigger number from your starter than if you start with an older pack of yeast that only starts with 50 billion--because 50 billion have died off.

The best thing you have going for you is that you're using a clean yeast for your IPA and it will be difficult for you to have ill-effects from this starter. It will be a great strain to practice with.

 

Jamil Zainasheff wrote a good article entitled The Secret to Healthy Yeast: Making a Starter. You can download the article from the AHA website: http://www.homebrewersassociation.org/pages/zymurgy/free-downloads

One extract from that article:

Q: HOW MUCH YEAST OR HOW BIG A STARTER DO I NEED?
A White Labs Pitchable Yeast vial and a Wyeast ACTIVATOR™ 125 XL Smack Pack both contain an average of 100 billion cells and are enough to pitch directly into 5 U.S. gallons (18.9 liters) of an ale wort at 1.048 SG (12 °P). This is a pitching rate of 5.3 million cells per milliliter, which is close to the pitching rate many professional breweries begin with when starting a new pitch of ale yeast. This rate works well because the health and vitality of fresh laboratory cultured yeast are superior to yeast harvested from normal fermentation. Higher gravity worts, especially once they exceed a specific gravity of 1.060 (15 °P), larger wort volumes and lager fermentations all require higher pitching rates (or a starter) for optimum results.

In general, a 2-liter starter doubles the amount of yeast in a single vial or pack. For the above example, you would only need one package of yeast if you made a 2- liter starter. To make it easier to figure out how much yeast you’ll get out of a starter, Wyeast created a calculator that estimates the amount of growth from a given starter size, which will be available soon at www.wyeastlab.com.”

I personally use a 3 liter wine bottle to make my yeast starters.

Cheers!

 

You've got lots of good answers in this thread, and I think the others have mostly given you the info you need. I would just like to chime in and say that if you don't have a stir plate, it's pretty easy to find a large enough vessel to make an effective starter. What I did before I had a stire plate was use one of those 2L plastic soda bottles, which are cheap, easy to clean/sanitize, and easy to shake/agitate.

For a beer this size, I would suggest you might use two smack packs or vials, make a starter of about 1.5L in a soda bottle, and shake it up from time to time as it ferments, which will probably take about 36 hours or so. At that point, you can put it in the refrigerator to cold crash it, save it for a couple days if necessary, and on brew day decant the fluid, and pitch some very healthy and happy yeast.

Seriously, of all the changes in my process that I've made since that first brew day, making an appropriately sized starter may have had the most impact. Long story short: make the starter, and I think you'll be pleasantly surprised by the results.

 

100 grams of DME to 1000 liters of water boil in flask let cool add yeast. Shake often for 2 days then place in fridge for at least 24 hours. Decant and pour into wort.

 

You need to check that.

Edit - you really do.

 

This is exactly how I do it, except I have a stir plate (from stir starters). Works like a champ. The stir plate is good, but not required if you keep up with shaking your starter.

I keep a little DME on hand for making starters.

 

I highly suspect that you just use 1 liter vs. 1000 liters!

Just to re-enforce what was previousy mentioned, a 'good' size for a starter is generally larger than 1 liter.

hopfenunmaltz mentioned 1.5 liters if you use a stirplate.

If you don't use a stirplate than there is definitely a need for a starter greater than 1 liter.

Cheers!

 

That is why I said that needed to be checked. 1000 liters is 263 gallons. 1 liter=1000 mL.