Yeast starter?

I need to make a yeast starter but I don't have any DME could I buy a bottle of Malta Goya at the grocery store and use that ?

I don't know about that. Not sure if you have any grain, but you could just crush some grain and make a small amount of wort at 1.037 OG with it.

Any know how much Belgian pale to how much water ? And secondly thanks for the link to the Malta Goya

Enough to get about the 1.037 OG mentioned above. If it is a little higher or lower its no big deal. it doesn't have to be belgian pale either; some guys just use sugar.

454k30 said:

Enough to get about the 1.037 OG mentioned above. If it is a little higher or lower its no big deal. it doesn't have to be belgian pale either; some guys just use sugar.

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Are you suggesting that he use sugar to make a yeast starter?

Not a good idea. If you want the reasons for not doing it, run a simple search on these forums and see what some of the more knowledgeable brewers have to say about what it'll do to the yeast. Seems like it's better to do no starter than a table sugar starter.

My second choice for the OP, after using DME of course, would be the Malta Goya (if it's preservative free). If you want to do a starter with some type of base grain, you'll have to do a mash.

What's an option for a starter w/o grain ?

I am by no means a seasoned brewer, and I am sure there are logical reasons to keep the starter gravity close to the O.G of the wort, but I have had consistently good results by taking some of a harvested yeast cake and reusing it. All I do is put some yeast cake into a sanitized jar, and place it in the fridge. When I need yeast, I bring the yeast to room temperature, add sugar mixture, wait a couple of hours, and pitch the started yeast into my fermentation bucket.You could give it a try in a pinch. I boil 2 cups water with1/4 cup or so of table sugar, cool and add to approximately the same volume of re harvested yeast cake, and wait a couple of hours and then pitch the majority of it in to the wort. If all you have is one small volume of yeast, add a small amount of it to a small amount of it to the sugar water, wait an hour or so and repeat. This is something that works for me and my specific house yeast, and as always, YMMV.

EDIT: the OP was asking about a starter for the yeast, and I was talking about yeast that had already been harvested. It is a completely different thing. I just wasn't thinking

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MindenMan said:

If all you have is one small volume of yeast, add a small amount of it to a small amount of it to the sugar water, wait an hour or so and repeat. This is something that works for me and my specific house yeast, and as always, YMMV.

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Table sugar is sucrose, a crystalline disaccharide of fructose and glucose, a very simple sugar. If you use it as the primary sugar in your starter, you effectively "program" the new yeast cells to eat that simple kind of sugar.

If you then take those cells and pitch them into a wort that consists of maltose (a more complex sugar formed when starch is hydrolyzed by amylase), that yeast has a more difficult time consuming it than if it had been raised on the maltose to begin with.

BigFloyd said:

Table sugar is sucrose, a crystalline disaccharide of fructose and glucose, a very simple sugar. If you use it as the primary sugar in your starter, you effectively "program" the new yeast cells to eat that simple kind of sugar.

If you then take those cells and pitch them into a wort that consists of maltose (a more complex sugar formed when starch is hydrolyzed by amylase), that yeast has a more difficult time consuming it than if it had been raised on the maltose to begin with.

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What if I make a starter with LME & honey which are the two sugars in my brew will that help?