My first yeast starter (1L) is currently on a stir plate for a brew day tomorrow (2.5 gallon batch). I know that most people just dump the whole starter in, but i was wondering if it is okay to cold crash to the starter and get the yeast to cake at the bottom, then dump out most of the dme wort to leave a primarily yeast slurry. I'd prefer not to contribute flavors from my starter to my beer. Is this okay to do?
Not only okay but good practice IMO. Just re-suspend the cake in the small amount of remaining wort and pitch away. EDIT: @VikeMan beat me to it.
Any thoughts on how long i need to refrigerate the flask to get all of the yeast to settle to a cake?
Usually just give it a day to settle out but it sounds like you may not have that much time, I'd guess if you started now though it would be mostly settled by the time you brew tomorrow.
Decanting the starter beer before pitching the yeast into a 2.5G batch size is absolutely necessary. No reason to give up valuable space in the fermentor for less than quality ingredients.
I always decant. I just brewed a cream ale and had a 2L starter. No way I was dumping all that "beer" in my beer. Two days in the fridge and got a nice compact cake. Poured off most of that liquid prior to pitching.
Pitching the entire starter is strictly reserved for non-conformist brewers. However, the recipe needs to be made knowing how much the starter will dilute the beer. If done properly, pitching the entire starter makes a better tasting beer. Fact! Fortunately, you can't miss what you've never had, so you might as well chill and decant.
Until a convincing Brulosopher type experiment reveals to me that it doesn't matter, or that I would be better off pitching the whole thing, I won't pitch entire starters if they are > ~ 1 L. You'll probably sacrifice some healthy yeast when you decant, but at least your wort is not 10% over-oxidized nastiness.
i'm going to push my brew day to tuesday and decant. thanks for the advice. unfortunately, my starter overflowed last night and i lost about 10% of the solution. not much i can do about it now, but i might need a bigger flask for next time.
