From what I've read about starters, it seems that most people suggest room temp conditions. This seems contrary to what I've experienced with my limited brewing experience. I would think you would want to do the starter at the temp the yeast is happy at / beer fermentation would be at. Wouldn't the yeast make fusels or other byproducts at warmer temps that would show up in your beer? In small quantities I suppose, but still. What do you guys do? Room temp starters, or temp controlled starters?
Happiness is relative. How do you know the yeast are happiest at the temp you make the beer at? Just because they make compounds that we consider off flavors at certain temps, might not necessarily mean they aren't happy. I am assuming temp isnt something that they need to get acclimated to. I might be off on this. Regardless of that, I make all my starters at room temp, but also decant especially when I use a stirplate and/or make lagers. If you make a starter for a lager at lager temps, you probably might not get as high of growth rate.
Room temperature if conditions are moderate. If its 70+ in the house I start them in my temp controlled fermentation fridge
Yeast are really "happy" at warm temps (>80) but they tend to produce flavors we don't like in beer. Most suggest that you dump crash/dump the liquid in a starter because of off flavors and oxidation, but keep the "happy" yeast This is covered in "Yeast" by White and Zainisheff (spelling?)
@corbmoster the temperature you utilize for making a yeast starter is to large measure a function of whether you intend to cold crash your yeast starter or not. Yeast growth occurs more quickly at very warm temperatures but there will be what are considered to be off-flavors in that liquid. This is not an issue if you cold crash your starters and decant the starter ‘beer’. I personally prefer to pitch my yeast starters at high krausen (I do not decant) so I produce my yeast starters at what are considered to be proper fermentation temperatures (e.g., mid 60’s F for an ale yeast strain). I should mention that I don’t use a stirplate; a yeast starter made using a stirplate may have oxidized wort. Some folks are of the opinion that even conducting a yeast starter at ‘normal’ temperatures you should decant since the wort of the starter may not exactly be the same as the wort you use to make the beer. Since a yeast starter is typically 10% or less of a batch size I have not noticed any issues in this regard. Cheers!
Thanks @JackHorzempa I was planning on decanting regardless of temp. I just figured, why include the spent wort? It might interfere with the beer. Good to hear it hasn't influenced your brews though.
If you are going to decant then you might as well let your yeast starter get very warm; that will increase the growth rate. Cheers!
I have definitely noticed the presence of starter wort in the finished beer when I didn't decant. Ever tasted starter wort? Not good...reminded me of Olde English 800. Want to dump a couple pints of that in your Koelsch?
If a starter is conducted similar to fermenting a beer it will not taste like Olde English 800. If a starter is conducted very warm (greater than 70 degrees F) and/or with a stirplate then it will indeed taste non-good. Cheers!
If you can dump a non-decanted starter made with pale DME and conducted at 70F into a light beer (such as a Koelsch, Helles, etc.) and not notice a difference then you must be doing something very different than what I am doing.
