Making a Yeast Starter

Chipper Dave of Fermentedly Challenged shows how to make a yeast starter for your homebrew beer. Tips on how to ensure your next brew day goes well

Category:

Howto & Style

Tags:

• homebrew
• homebrewing
• yeast
• starter
• beer
• wort
• fermentation
• extract
• hops

[FermentedlyChipper]

I would still recommend getting a separate small bag of light dry malt extract. If you're worried about that altering the flavor of your beer recipe and you'd rather not use a small amount of DME then simply using a vial of liquid yeast or 2 and not making a starter should still work.

[cupcake1772]

about how many cups or oz of water will u need??

[FermentedlyChipper]

The recipe is in the video. 1 quart = 4 cups = 32 oz of water. After the water boils you must cool it down to around 70 degrees F. It the temperature is too high (above 80 F) then the yeast may get stressed and die. So in order for them to thrive, you must keep the water temperature between 60 to 70 degrees F for optimal growth. If the water gets too cold the yeast can go dormant or die also.

[rawimpact]

what about for all grain, what do you use instead of extract?

[BeeRich33]

Tonight? Really should sterilize right before transferring. Airborne microbiology is a problem.

[FermentedlyChipper]

The more oxygen in the water the better because boiling takes away a lot of the oxygen in the water. So before putting the yeast in, shake up the cooled wort vigorously in order to get more oxygen back into the solution. Yeast need oxygen as well as the sugars to multiply. Temperature is also key. Keep it around 65-70 degrees F for optimal growth.

[cupcake1772]

thanks is cause i doing a project and my question is:does the temperature of water affect the volume of yeast

[FermentedlyChipper]

Boil the water then rapidly cool it down. The water needs to be at "pitching temperature" in order for the yeast to survive. Between 70-75 degrees Fahrenheit should do.

[cupcake1772]

what temperature does the water have to be?

[FermentedlyChipper]

Putting the flask right on the coil burner may be doable, but would make it more difficult to stir, and yes it will volcano up pretty easily. I even had a small boil over in my wide mouth pot too. The funnel and screen is fine because I like to put a couple of hop pellets into my starter and don't want to get that into the flask.