How to make a starter

I always have to look this up, is it half a quart of water and half a cup of DME? A quart and a half cup? It seems there is conflicting info, Palmer says the later, Wyeast says the former. I'm going with Wyeast on this one, I've copied their starter recipe here:

Starter Recipe:
The optimal media for cell growth and health require using a malt based media (DME) fortified with nutrients. Gravity should be kept near 1.040 and cultures should be grown at 70°F.

Recipe

0.5 cup DME (100g, 3.5oz)

½ tsp Wyeast Nutrient

1qt.(1L) H2O

Mix DME, nutrient, and water.

Boil 20 minutes to sterilize.

Pour into a sanitized flask or jar with loose lid or foil.

Allow to cool to 70°F.

Shake well and add yeast culture.

Timing of Starter:
Because starters are inoculated at high cell densities, growth is usually maximized within 24-36 hours. The gravity of the starter should always be checked prior to inoculation into wort to assure proper cell growth . Cultures should be used immediately, or refrigerated for up to 1 week before using. Cell viability will decrease rapidly if culture are left at ambient temperatures for extended time.

Batch 135, SNPA clone

Trying a yeast experiment, a 10 gallon batch with only one packet of Wyeast 1056. Thought I'd do the Sierra Nevada Pale Ale clone for this one.

10 gallon batch

20 lbs 2 row
1 lbs wheat
1 lbs Crystal 60/120

Mashed at 154F for 60 minutes.

90 minute boil.

2 oz Galena, 60 minutes (SNPA says Nugget, but I didn't have any)
1 oz Perle, 15 minutes
2 oz Cascade, flameout

Wyeast 1056, one packet.

The plan is to run off 2.5 gallons, oxygenate, pitch the yeast, wait 36 hours, then add that 2.5 gallons to the remaining 7.5 gallons. I came up a little short on wort, so I'll only have about 9.5 gallons total. This is really like making a starter, but out of the same recipe rather than DME or plain 2-row. We'll see.

Yeast 104

A question came up on my beer club forum titled "Saving Yeast". Here is my response:

I do this all the time. I buy yeast maybe once or twice a year. Of course, sanitation is critical. Here's how I do it:

1. Rack off the beer to wherever you rack it to.
2. Depending on how much beer is left in the fermenter, I'll add up to a pint of water. I use store-bought bottled water.
3. Swirl around until the yeast cake is all liquid, nothing clinging to the sides or bottom of the fermenter.
4. Pour out into sanitized 1qt mason jars. I generally get 2 or 3 jars per 10 gallon batch. I leave about 1 inch head space.
5. Drop in one of these per jar: http://www.rei.com/product/736898 This is a tip that Jeremy posted a while back. This helps prevent infection.
6. Refrigerate until you need it. My refrigerator is set for 37F. On brew day, I get out a jar or two (I use 1 jar per 5 gallons) in the morning and put them on the kitchen counter to bring them up to room temp. Shake every now and then to get the yeast in suspension.
7. Pitch when you're ready.

You can do even more if you want. Between #4 and #5, set the jars on the counter for 15 or 20 minutes. It should settle out into 3 layers, the top layer is beer/water, the middle layer is your yeast, the bottom layer is trub. You can pour off the beer/water and yeast into another jar and leave most of the trub behind. You can repeat this several times until what you have is pretty much just yeast.

I've used yeast as old as 2 months doing this and have not had any problems -- well, not any problems that I can attribute to the yeast, anyway.

Some pictures while harvesting yeast:

Mason jars are sanitized and draining.

I added a bottle of water because it looked like I got most of the beer siphoned off and it looks there is some yeast stuck to the bottom.

Yeast in the jars. I let them sit for a couple of hours so I could take some pics of the yeast separating out, but they really looked just the same, so I just put them in the fridge. It seems to me that the combination of whole hops, which form a filter bed in the boil kettle and the counter-flow chiller, there really isn't much trub that makes it into the fermenter.

Yeast 103

I got a new package of Wyeast 1272 yesterday. I have a long weekend, 4 days off, so I'm planning to brew. I want to do a 10 gallon batch, and single package of yeast won't be enough. I checked Jamil's 'Mr Malty Pitching Rate Calculator' for the quantity I'd need. This is a great calculator, although experience shows that it's generally okay to go with somewhat less yeast that the calculator says. In fact, the Wyeast package says it contains 100 million cells and is designed for a 5 gallon batch, compared to the calculator saying I should have 225 million cells. For a 10 gallon batch, which is what I want to do, the calculator says I need 450 million cells, as opposed to 2 packages containing a total of 200 million cells. I figure if I can get anywhere above 200 million cells in my starter, I'll be okay. After playing with the calculator for a while, I can get 300 million cells in 3 quarts using 1 packet of yeast. It's probably not optimal, but it'll be good enough, and I only need one packet of yeast.

I thought I had some wort saved from a previous batch in my fridge in the garage. I did, but it wasn't enough, and worse, it was old and starting to mold. I tossed it out. I didn't have any LME or DME on hand, so I ground 3/4 pound of 2-row, put it in a grain bag, and mashed it on the stove in a gallon of 155F water for about half an hour. This should get me right at 3 quarts of wort with a gravity of about 1.028, which is enough for a starter. In fact, that turned out to be just right. After mashing, I boiled the wort for about 15 minutes to make sure it was sterilized. After it had cooled to about 70F, I pitched the yeast, gave it a good stir, then split it out into mason jars. I don't have a stir plate, but just shaking the jars every now and then is good enough. After just a couple of hours, there is plenty of activity in all of the jars. I used 4 jars to hold the 3 quarts, so there is plenty of head room, which minimizes the risk of exploding jars or oozing out the tops.

As with any brewing activity involving yeast, sanitation is critical, so I make liberal use of Starsan. I keep it mixed in a spray bottle, which is real handy for sanitizing the outside of the yeast packet, the mixing spoon, and the scissors I used to cut open the packet. All the jars, lids, and rings were also liberally covered with Starsan.

I should be all set to brew tomorrow or Sunday.

Update -- I've got real strong activity, and I'm worried about the mason jars. I sanitized a 2 gallon plastic jar (food grade) and dumped all the jars into the big one. Plenty of head room in the 2 gallon jar, so no worries of foaming all over the place.

I pitched this into batch 71, Panama Red.

Yeast 102

After my yeast starter fiasco (see Yeast 101), I was short a packet of yeast. I'd only bought enough for two batches, and one was splattered all over the walls of the hot water heater closet. Larry's is a drive from my house, it's over an hour round trip. I'd read about getting the yeast back out of the fermenter and reusing it. This seemed like a good opportunity to give it a try rather than spend an hour staring at the windshield of the car. Although, I did anyway...

Getting the yeast back from the fermenter and reusing it doesn't sound particularly difficult. It does require some 1 qt canning jars. After my last fiasco, I figured I should go ahead and get the right jars, after all, if this works out and isn't too difficult, it would be a big money saver (a smack pack of Wyeast is $4.25, the instructions I got from Wyeast say I can reuse the yeast 6 - 10 times before needing to buy a new pack). It turns out that almost nobody sells canning jars anymore. It took checking at 4 stores before I found some, $10 for a case of 12.

It was time to rack the batch of Cascade to the secondary and dry hop, which is the also time to gather the yeast. The instructions said to get 3 jars, sanitized, filled half full of sterilized water. Once the beer is racked out of the primary, pour the first jar of water into the primary, swirl it around with the hops, trub, and yeast, then empty the primary back into the jar. I had way more "stuff" than would fit in one jar, in fact, I was able to fill all three. I let them sit for about 15 - 20 minutes, until they were nicely segregated into layers. While they were sitting and separating, I got 6 more jars ready, then poured the top layer of the first set of jars into the second, and tossed the bottom layer down the sink.

The jars are sitting overnight in the refrigerator now. After about an hour, they are separating out into three layers, the top layer is water, the middle layer is the yeast, the bottom layer is junk. There's less than 1/4 inch of junk now, I'll see how it looks in the morning. The next step is to pour off the water, then pour the yeast layer into the third set of jars. The third set can stay refrigerated for up to a month. To use, pour off the water layer and pitch the yeast directly, or make a starter out of it.

**
I let the jars sit overnight (about 6 hours), poured off the water layer, poured the yeast layer into the third set of jars, and threw the bottom layer down the sink. I put them back in the refrigerator overnight again, there was a fairly thin layer of yeast on the bottom of each the next day. It didn't look like very much yeast to me, so I combined all three into one and made a starter out of it.

**
To make a starter: boil 2 cups of water, add 1/3 cup of malt extract, boil 15 minutes, cool to 70 degrees or so, then add the yeast. Pour into a quart jar, tighten the lid, agitate well. Store at 75 degrees F for a day or two before pitching. I read that a rule of thumb is to let the yeast sit for 1 day per month that the yeast is old, that is, if the yeast was harvested in April and now it's July, let it start for 3 days. Overall, this works really well, and is a big money saver. Since I started doing this, I've only bought 2 new packages of yeast for 12 batches of beer.

**

Later in life, I've gotten lazy. Well, I suppose I've been lazy all along, but now I'm lazier! The whole yeast washing thing is a lot of work. My current method is to get a 12 oz bottle of store-bought water, dump it into the fermenter after racking out the beer, swirl it around to get everything flowing smoothly, then pouring it into Mason jars. I usually get 3 jars out of a 10 gallon batch. I add one water purification tablet per jar. You can get these at REI or other sporting goods store. They kill any bacteria, but leave the yeast alone. These seem to keep for several months in the refrigerator with no problem.  On brew day, I get out 2 jars (1 per 5 gallons) from the refrigerator and set them on the kitchen counter.  By pitching time, they are at room temperature.  I give the jars a good shake to get everything suspended, then pitch and stir.

Yeast 101

Here's a short story about a yeast fiasco:

I was behind on brewing, batch 12 had a week to go in the secondary fermenter, the keg for batch 11 was feeling light, so I made a run to Larry's and bought enough for two batches of Cascade (see Batch 13). My plan was to do one Sunday night followed by another on Monday or Tuesday. I'd been reading about using a yeast starter, so thought I'd give it a try.

I looked around for a suitable bottle to use, a quart jar was recommended, but I found a 28 oz vinegar bottle that was nearly empty and figured that was close enough. Early Sunday morning, I boiled a pint of water and added 1/2 cup of malt extract and sanitized the empty vinegar bottle. I cooled the wort, added the yeast, and poured it into the bottle. This particular bottle had ("had" is a keyword in this story) snap cap, that is, it was sort of a flip top with a hinge and plastic ring around the neck of the bottle to hold the cap in place.

I snapped the cap and set the bottle on top of the hot water heater. The hot water heater is ideal for starting yeast, it keeps a very constant 75 degrees F in the closet. The instructions I had said to agitate the bottle every now and then. The yeast should be ready for pitching in about 12 hours, which fit well with my plan to brew that evening.

As it happened, that particular Sunday was Easter, so we had some of the relatives over for dinner. It was about 2 pm when we sat down, and it occurred to me that I hadn't agitated the yeast bottle for a while. Rather than wait until after dinner, I thought I'd give it a shake right then, as I was afraid I'd forget about it if I waited.

So into the hot water heater closet I went, dressed in my Easter Sunday best, and gave the bottle a shake -- just one. It was like opening a champagne bottle, the cap went flying (I still haven't found it, it's probably deep behind the hot water heater), the yeast/wort solution shot out of the bottle like a geyser, hosing down the inside of the closet, getting all over the hall carpet and my Easter best. The bottle was essentially empty when it finally stopped gushing.

There goes brewing on Sunday. The moral of the story -- get a jar with a screw cap.