I didn't dissolve the DME in my starter - am I boned?

Hi all,

I made my first yeast starter , but I did something kind of dumb. I didn't really dissolve the DME in the water - I just kind of mixed it into the warm water and shook it, but didn't boil or really heat the water in any way. The yeast is in there now.

A) Is this going to work at all? Can the yeast still eat it?
B) If I put this starter in my beer, is it going to make it all weird?

I'm not brewing til tomorrow so if need be i can always make a new starter, just hate to waste the yeast.

You should have boiled it.

Yes, discard and start over......or possibly boil and repitch that mess.

The yeast goes in warm (or preferably cool) the DME gets boiled.

Took your advice and trashed the original starter. Unfortunately I didn't have another of the yeasts (WLP 830), and neither did the LHBS, so I'm going with WLP 838, Southern German Lager. Doing a Marzen, but I want it drier/more balanced than a lot of the recipes I've seen. Hopefully this guy will do!

You don't have to boil or even heat water to dissolve DME in it, but you do have to boil the water DME mixture to sterilize it.

Personally, I would have let it ride. You're dumping 100 billion yeast cells in there - they've got a pretty good chance for fighting off anything else that was in that wort. Think about how they "pitched yeast" back before they didn't even KNOW about yeasts. They took a stick that had a lot of yeast cells on it (and probably a good deal of other strange stuff on it) and stirred it into the wort.

LandoLincoln said:

Personally, I would have let it ride. You're dumping 100 billion yeast cells in there - they've got a pretty good chance for fighting off anything else that was in that wort. Think about how they "pitched yeast" back before they didn't even KNOW about yeasts. They took a stick that had a lot of yeast cells on it (and probably a good deal of other strange stuff on it) and stirred it into the wort.

Click to expand...

Maybe, but if you are effed from the starter and do everything else right, you are still effed.

Not worth it.

You need a huge starter for a lager. check out mrmalty.com
depending on OG you may need to start with two vials or step it up a few times.
cheers.

Thanks all! The new starter went pretty well. I was a little concerned because it looked like it finished bubbling after about 24 hours, but I guess a vial of yeast can chomp through 4 oz of DME in about that long.

The good news is that it took to the wort like a duck to water, and this morning (about 12 hours after pitching), it's bubbling away happily and everything seems to be good.