Yeast starters

[chiefsbrew1]

How important are yeast starters I've been thinking of giving it a try

 

[Gavin C]

If using liquid yeast, I believe them to be indispensable for all my beers.

If using dry yeast, they are not indicated, not needed and not to the benefit of the yeast.

They are simple to make. As Yoda would say. "There is no try". Just make one.

There is a simple walkthrough of making one in my signature below.

 

[catdaddy66]

I never used to make yeast starters and used dry yeast exclusively. I ended up with good beers, for the most part.

Once I began brewing all grain I wanted to improve my process. So I began washing yeast (that sh$t is expensive! Lol) and made starters. I immediately found my beer had improved.

Then I found temp control, but that's another subject!

 

[TheBigLebrewsk1]

I was religious about starters for years, then I stopped and use the wyeast activators. I don't find any difference in beer quality post fermentation. They state that it is sufficient to ferment 5 gals of ale wort with an OG up to 1.060. It works for me.

 

[budbo]

If you use liquid yeast and want to save money, they are great because you can refill the vial with the starter, if not, they will get your ferment going faster, really not necessary unless you are cold pitching lagers

 

[zacster]

I always make starters now, and I also now have temp control. These have added tremendously to the quality of the beer. I don't re-use my yeast though, it never seemed like it was worth the trouble for the number of brews that I do.

 

[eadavis80]

I always make starters for liquid or harvested yeast. I am not sure they help, but I know they don't hurt. They make me confident that what I pitch is viable. Make one and see how it works for you. I enjoy pretty much all parts of the brewing process, so making a starter is not really a bothersome chore for me. For others, it's maybe 20 minutes they'd rather not do.

 

[joshesmusica]

I'm with you, I don't find the minimal time it takes to make a starter so troublesome. Especially because it gives me insurance that the yeast I'm about to pitch is viable. Then I don't ever have to worry about having to create another one of those "my fermentation seems stuck" threads. I just made a starter last night for a kolsch yeast that I had in the fridge since the end of April/beginning of May. I don't have a flask or a stirplate, just use a 6 liter bucket. I always put the airlock on the first night so that I can wake up in the morning and see bubbles. I then unfasten the lid, but still leave it on, and just swirl it when I see it. Bubbles this morning told me that my yeast is good to go, and I won't be destroying my oktoberfest ale because i was too lazy to make a starter.

But, as stated that's only for liquid yeast.

Plus I like to harvest the clean, healthy, vital yeast from the starters, not the trub-full, tired yeast from the end of the batch.

 

[zacster]

I highly recommend the Shamelessly Cheap $12 DIY Stirplate, and a 2L flask. It makes starters a total no-brainer.

 

[mjcoss]

As others have said. The general practice seems to be
1) if using dry yeast, then starters are not needed, and some would say contraindicated.
2) if using liquid yeast, then starters are a good idea. It will allow you to make sure that your yeast is viable before you get to brew day.

The answer to if you need a starter or not, depends on the OG of your wort, the volume of your wort, and the target pitch rate (million cells/ml/degree plato), and how fresh your yeast is. The target pitch rate varies among brewers. Some say 1.0 mil/ml/degree plato, others 0.75, some as high as 2.0. Using these number you can figure out how many cells you "ideally" should have for you brew day.

If you under pitch the number of cells, the yeast may struggle a bit but the colony will grow. You may get undesirable byproducts from the yeast under these circumstances. If you over pitch, usually nothing bad is going to happen.

A vial of liquid yeast has ~100 billion cells on it's manufactured date. The 11 gram dry packets have a similar number, typically 10 billion per gram or 110 billion. But these are based on the manufactured date. As the yeast ages, you loose some. More so in the case of liquid. White Labs for instance states that every month after the manufactured date, it looses 20% of the viable yeast. The dry obviously last longer, but there are loses there as well.

So for some big beers, you need more than 1 vial, or dry packet. You can just buy extra packets/vials and avoid the whole starter thing. Or you can make a starter. This will increase the number of cells your pitching.

Northern Brewers (and probably all the rest) are selling wort in a can, which makes making a starter a snap. Sanitize a container, and utensils, open the can, add the yeast, install airlock or sanitized aluminum foil. Done.

There are plenty of calculators out there for calculating what your target cell count needs to be, and if a starter is recommended. Again, you can always underpitch, many people do and get good beer. The biggest factor is that pitch rate, and it's all over the board. Hard to do qualitative analysis on something so very subjective without a lot of equipment and testing.

 

[kh54s10]

IMO, Proper yeast counts, and fermentation temperature control are 2 of the easiest ways to improve your beer.

Making a starter has 2 aims. 1) pitching the proper yeast cell counts for the gravity of the recipe and 2) saving money. You could buy two packs of yeast at about $9 each or one for $9 and a dollar or two of DME for a starter.

Will a beer ferment if you don't make a starter when using liquid yeast. Of course it will. But the worst off flavors produced during fermentation, temperature problems aside, are while the yeast are reproducing to cell counts sufficient to ferment the beer. Why not let that happen in a starter instead of your beer. Especially if you decant the starter liquid.

The difference might be very small depending on the type of beer and the yeast used but it is easy to make a starter. Give your beer the chance to be excellent rather than "works for me".

 

[Natdavis777]

If using liquid yeast, I believe them to be indispensable for all my beers.

If using dry yeast, they are not indicated, not needed and not to the benefit of the yeast.

They are simple to make. As Yoda would say. "There is no try". Just make one.

There is a simple walkthrough of making one in my signature below.

This is the best summarization in my opinion.

 

[DurtyChemist]

Proper temperature control is more important than having lots of yeast.

 

[joshesmusica]

Proper temperature control is more important than having lots of yeast.

i guess it depends what you mean by lots of yeast.

if you mean over-pitching, then you might be right.

if you mean propagating enough to have the proper pitch rate, then you're wrong. unless you're going for a style that allows for some residual esters.

temp control isn't as important in belgian styles for example. not entirely important for heffeweizens either.

and then there are these:
http://brulosophy.com/2014/12/15/the-temp-at-which-we-pitch-exbeeriment-results/
http://brulosophy.com/2015/01/19/fermentation-temperature-pt-1-exbeeriment-results/
http://brulosophy.com/2015/06/22/fermentation-temperature-pt-3-lager-yeast-exbeeriment-results/
http://brulosophy.com/2015/05/11/fermentation-temperature-pt-2-english-ale-exbeeriment-results/

in all four different experiments with ferment temps. the only one that reached statistical significance was the english ale. but even the writer of the blog suggested that if he was served one right after the other without knowledge of the switch, he likely wouldn't have even noticed. they were that similar.

now take into consideration that he is doing a proper sized, healthy yeast pitch into these beers. so to say that one is more important than the other is off base at best. in these experiments it seems to show that if you pitch the right amount of yeast, then ferment temps aren't too big of a danger in fairly normal sized beers (although all of those styles are arguably styles that you should be able to notice that difference right away because of their balanced nature).

but then they've done experiments on starters vs. single-vial only. and starters vs. same day vitality starter (which will make the yeast vital and ready to go, but isn't enough time for there to be significant cell growth). and those experiments showed no statistical significance. yet on those he had proper ferment temps.

on the single vial, though, he saw a major difference in lag time. which if someone didn't sanitize very well, would have likely been enough time for some infection to take hold.

so to write-off either temp control, pitch rate/health, or sanitation as less important than the others is off base, at best.

 

[Dog House Brew]

I pressure can wort and it is as easy as dump and add yeast. Starters do make a difference IMO.

 

[55x11]

i guess it depends what you mean by lots of yeast.

if you mean over-pitching, then you might be right.

if you mean propagating enough to have the proper pitch rate, then you're wrong. unless you're going for a style that allows for some residual esters.

temp control isn't as important in belgian styles for example. not entirely important for heffeweizens either.

and then there are these:
http://brulosophy.com/2014/12/15/the-temp-at-which-we-pitch-exbeeriment-results/
http://brulosophy.com/2015/01/19/fermentation-temperature-pt-1-exbeeriment-results/
http://brulosophy.com/2015/06/22/fermentation-temperature-pt-3-lager-yeast-exbeeriment-results/
http://brulosophy.com/2015/05/11/fermentation-temperature-pt-2-english-ale-exbeeriment-results/

in all four different experiments with ferment temps. the only one that reached statistical significance was the english ale. but even the writer of the blog suggested that if he was served one right after the other without knowledge of the switch, he likely wouldn't have even noticed. they were that similar.

now take into consideration that he is doing a proper sized, healthy yeast pitch into these beers. so to say that one is more important than the other is off base at best. in these experiments it seems to show that if you pitch the right amount of yeast, then ferment temps aren't too big of a danger in fairly normal sized beers (although all of those styles are arguably styles that you should be able to notice that difference right away because of their balanced nature).

but then they've done experiments on starters vs. single-vial only. and starters vs. same day vitality starter (which will make the yeast vital and ready to go, but isn't enough time for there to be significant cell growth). and those experiments showed no statistical significance. yet on those he had proper ferment temps.

on the single vial, though, he saw a major difference in lag time. which if someone didn't sanitize very well, would have likely been enough time for some infection to take hold.

so to write-off either temp control, pitch rate/health, or sanitation as less important than the others is off base, at best.

I love brulosophy!

what these guys show again and again is that the parameter space for creating a good beer is a lot larger than most people think. Which sort of makes sense as otherwise making a decent beer would be a real struggle.

 

[rzwahr]

Another alternative you can use is the Drauflassen technique as described by braukaiser (http://braukaiser.com/wiki/index.php?title=Drauflassen)

In a nutshell, you are brewing a full batch of wort, chilling to pitching temp, but only pitching yeast to a portion of the batch (usually 1/3 to 1/2) thereby requiring less yeast, waiting 24-36 hours for low krausen and then pitching the second part of the wort "on top of" (which is where the expression Drauflassen derives its meaning) the already-fermenting wort. Basically what you're doing is making a big "starter" if you want to think of it that way, albeit you are doing it at the proper fermentation temperature and at the correct pitching rate. When you add in the second part of the wort on top of the already fermenting beer you are basically introducing fresh sugars that the yeast are eager to consume. In addition, according to what Kai says, there is no ill effect of aerating the second half of the wort right before you pitch it, since the active yeast will readily consume it quickly. Per Braukaiser's site, Narziss reports that "that this technique is beneficial to the attenuation and the ester levels of the final beer. The latter are reduced because the yeast is kept longer in its growth phase during which it consumes the ester precursor acetyl CoA [Narziss, 2005]" I will admit this seems odd to me, as what we are taught is that rapid yeast growth produces *more* esters, but who am I to argue with Narziss?

I have used this technique a couple of times with great results. Bottom line is, it prevents you from having to have a huge-ass starter to ferment a bigger batch of beer. It is also known as "double-batch brewing" in most american craft breweries and typically is employed when they have huge fermenters, but a smaller brew plant where it takes subsequent batches to fill them to capacity.

 

[ScrewyBrewer]

Actually Will at Naples Beach Brewing has been doing this for years, his fermentor had twice the capacity of his kettle. He'd fill the fermentor half way then pitch his yeast and then brew a second batch to top off the fermentor. I've sampled his beers two years in a row and they taste really good.

 

[joshesmusica]

Another alternative you can use is the Drauflassen technique as described by braukaiser (http://braukaiser.com/wiki/index.php?title=Drauflassen)

In a nutshell, you are brewing a full batch of wort, chilling to pitching temp, but only pitching yeast to a portion of the batch (usually 1/3 to 1/2) thereby requiring less yeast, waiting 24-36 hours for low krausen and then pitching the second part of the wort "on top of" (which is where the expression Drauflassen derives its meaning) the already-fermenting wort. Basically what you're doing is making a big "starter" if you want to think of it that way, albeit you are doing it at the proper fermentation temperature and at the correct pitching rate. When you add in the second part of the wort on top of the already fermenting beer you are basically introducing fresh sugars that the yeast are eager to consume. In addition, according to what Kai says, there is no ill effect of aerating the second half of the wort right before you pitch it, since the active yeast will readily consume it quickly. Per Braukaiser's site, Narziss reports that "that this technique is beneficial to the attenuation and the ester levels of the final beer. The latter are reduced because the yeast is kept longer in its growth phase during which it consumes the ester precursor acetyl CoA [Narziss, 2005]" I will admit this seems odd to me, as what we are taught is that rapid yeast growth produces *more* esters, but who am I to argue with Narziss?

I have used this technique a couple of times with great results. Bottom line is, it prevents you from having to have a huge-ass starter to ferment a bigger batch of beer. It is also known as "double-batch brewing" in most american craft breweries and typically is employed when they have huge fermenters, but a smaller brew plant where it takes subsequent batches to fill them to capacity.

I actually first heard of this technique on here. I know this is completely anecdotal, but:

I was producing really good beer, even though it was all either extract with steeping grains, or partial mash beers. i wanted to try my hand at liquid yeast, but I didn't have the capability to make a starter. I also started harvesting and washing yeast, but, again, couldn't make a starter. So I attempted the method of fermenting half the batch until krausen was clearly formed, then pouring in the other half. The only thing that was common among all these beers that had a strange bubblegum-like off-flavor was this technique. Yeast, recipe, ferment temps, etc. were all different.

I later ended up tasting a Saison, which is when I learned that the bubblegum flavor for me is the estery component of yeast-driven flavors. Which is exactly what you described; rapid yeast growth should theoretically produce more esters. This is precisely what I experienced in my beers that I fermented using this method.

 

[Rcbandl]

Proper temperature control is more important than having lots of yeast.

Temperature control is probably more important but proper pitch rate is right up there in line.

Do both and you will almost definitely be making a better beer than the "Ive always done it this way and never had a problem" guy.