So I slanted some yeast last spring from a store-bought vial as instructed by Saccharomyces tutorial (all seemed to go according to Hoyle) and got a stir plate. Now time to make a starter. since I had several slants and am a newbie at this I decided to harvest the yeast from two of them just to double my chances of this working. Used one cup of canned starter wort in a 500 ml beaker covered with sanitized foil on the plate for 36 hours. According to Sacch at this point it should look like chocolate milk. Mine got cloudy but stayed very much caramel in color. stepped up to one quart of wort in a 1000 ml beaker for another 24 hours on the plate and it again was cloudy but still caramel color (maybe I'm picking nits but my chocolate milk is not caramel in color - it is more of a light "putty" brown).
Anyway, at this point I decided to "cold crash" it just to see how much yeast I had grown. So put it in the fridge. When I looked at it 24 hours later I had a layer on the bottom of the 1000 ml beaker of about maybe 1/4" to 3/8" or so. I was dissapointed in that I had expect more like 3/4" to an inch.
So the question is, did I get it right, and can I pitch this stuff? If so, do I need to decant first or can I just let it warm up, swirl the yeast back into suspension and pitch?
Thanks for your help.
Anyway, at this point I decided to "cold crash" it just to see how much yeast I had grown. So put it in the fridge. When I looked at it 24 hours later I had a layer on the bottom of the 1000 ml beaker of about maybe 1/4" to 3/8" or so. I was dissapointed in that I had expect more like 3/4" to an inch.
So the question is, did I get it right, and can I pitch this stuff? If so, do I need to decant first or can I just let it warm up, swirl the yeast back into suspension and pitch?
Thanks for your help.
