Looking at creating my first yeast starter for a DIPA recipe with on O.G. target of 1.085. For this O.G. Brewer's Friend is telling me I would need a 3L starter of an O.G. of 1.040 with a stir plate to hit my cell count (assuming yeast is 1 month old) (oh, I'll also be buying 2 packs of yeast). The yeast starters work far better with a stir plate, however, stir plates cost an absolute fortune and there's no …
The Homebrew Dad yeast starter calculator (which gives you more numbers than the Mr. Malty one does) promises a yeast growth factor of about 45 times for 10 billion cells pitched into 3 litres of 1.040 gravity wort for a stir plate starter. In other words, 10 billion cells will produce about 450 billion new ones. I know that stir plate starters can achieve high growth rates, and 10 billion cells in a 3 litre stir plate starter will have …
I want to re-suspend yeast and generally keep a brew uniformly mixed in a carboy without having to open it and expose it to oxygen every time. Is there a hobbist-priced magnetic stirrer that works for this kind of application? Right now, I'm thinking about the long-term aging process of a red wine. In a quick test I found that the dome of the carboy makes it a little hard for the stirrer. Most chemistry mixing flasks have flat bottoms …
Why is the Erlenmeyer style flask the automatic go to for yeast starters? I know people use other containers besides flasks, and some flasks don't have flat bottoms but is there something special about the shape or angle of the sides? Just thought this was a good question to throw out there and see what comes back!
I'm building myself a stir plate out of some things from my scrap heap of computer parts (mainly an old external hard drive and a case fan). I've used it in its prototype stage for one yeast starter already. It worked well enough, but it was a bit finicky, especially once the starter got thick with yeast. Since the initial testing I did with a flask of water didn't accurately represent the stir plate's performance on a yeast starter, I …
This morning I smacked my first smack pack, and about 10 times, each time a little harder because deep depression would set in if the goodies spewed across the room. I finally got it, or so I thought. Fizzing away on the inside, it started to swell a bit about after an hour or so, and then 6 hours later, I sanitized my stuff, dumped it into my flask, all that good stuff... and it's doing its thing on the …
Now that I've discovered (thanks to jsled and Google) what a stir plate is and why I need to make one, I'm curious to know how far they can be pushed. Being a lazy brewer with a fairly well-equipped workshop, limited bench space, a hearty appetite for beer and a recurring case of gout, I prefer to make big batches of full-bodied but low-alcohol ales. Lack of time and near-absence of temperature control rule out lagers and lagering, at least …
I have two yeast starters going on my two homemade stir plates. The stir bar or the stir plate for one of them is malfunctioning and I can not increase the speed enough to get a vortex going. It is simply keeping the yeast in suspension. On the first yeast starter I ever did, I would put an aeration stone in the flask every 5 hours, in addition to the oxygen obtained through the vortex of the stir plate. I …
From chemistry I recall that we were supposed to shake almost everything in order to get the elements to react. With wort, however, we simply dump yeast in and wait 4 weeks before bottling. I would imagine that if we shook the carboy, we could decrease this 4 week time period. Even better if we could make a platform and use a stir plate. Why do we not shake the carboy for this particular chemical reaction? Edit: I am not …
Today I did my first yeast starter. I purchased the 2000mL flask and DME from northernbrewer, and it came with instructions for doing both 1000mL and 2000mL batches. It suggests 1000mL for 5 gallons of wort with OG of up to 1.080. For 1000mL, it says to put in 650mL of water and 1/2 cup DME. For 2000mL, it says to put in 1300mL of water and 1 cup of DME. So I meant to do a 1000mL starter but …
I've read online that the size of the vortex in a yeast starter does not matter. Why is this true? When I was experimenting with water yesterday, I created a monster vortex (very cool) and could see air bubbles screaming all over the water; turning the vortex down into a baby vortex resulted in no air bubbles screaming all over. Some people say that the point of the vortex is just to keep the yeast in suspension which will make …