Can a Starter get stuck?

[mtbiker278]

I just dove into my first starter last night and I'm wondering a couple of silly things. I'm sure if I picked up the "Yeast" book by Chris White everything would be answered in there, but I figured I would ask here anyway.

I'm doing a starter with intermittent shaking to introduce more oxygen. Mr. Malty (or Jamil) says that an intermittent shake yields less yeast than a stir plate, but is far better than having it just sit there.

I made a 2 quart starter with 1.5cups of DME. After cooling and pouring it into my 1gal jug I shook the heck out of it, added the white labs yeast, and shook it some more. Then I would shake it about every half hour for about 4 hours. At this point it was 11pm and I went to bed leaving the starter alone. When I got up this morning it looked to be at high Krausen, and I gave it a couple shakes to feed it more O2.

My question is since you can get stuck fermentations on a beer, whats to say you couldn't get a stuck starter? This is under the assumption that the yeast will go into a fermentation mode after all the O2 is used up. If I introduce more O2 into the starter would this stall the yeast, or would they just go back into a replication mode?

Thanks for the feedback!:rockin:

 

[kanzimonson]

I would say that a starter could never get stuck. Oxygen is what keeps yeast in the reproductive stage. A common antidote to stuck ferments is introducing active yeast because they already have a nice dose of nutrients and oxygen at the time of pitching.

 

[mtbiker278]

Well I guess this is more pertinent to the intermittent shaking since oxygen isn't introduced constantly. So by letting it sit there overnight and then shaking it to introduce oxygen would the yeast stall/stress out?

 

[kanzimonson]

What I'm trying to say is that yeast love the introduction of oxygen. I can't imagine introducing O2 would ever make them stall, especially in a starter which is low grav and even more so if you added some nutrient.