So I made a yeast starter (2035 - American Lager) on Wed night for the lager I'm brewing on Sunday. A few folks had recommended that for a lager I do the starter 4 - 5 days ahead of time. Two days to let the starter run like usual, but at room temp. Then another day or two to cold crash the thing in the fridge so I could decant off most of the liquid because of the weirdness of doing a lager starter at room temp.
I'm giving this a try, but I'm curious if anyone else has any thoughts on doing starters for lagers? Do you do them at the lower temp? If so, how early do you have to get it started? I'm curious about people's thoughts.
Three ways to do it. First way as you described, but you need to restart the starter with a pint or so of fresh wort the moringing of using it. I have not done that. Takes too much prep work for me this days.
Second way. Usually 4 liter startes with 1-2 smack packs, whatever mr malty has on the stir plate setting. I make it 18 hours before and just pitch the whole thing. Its at peak fermentation in the starter and everything goes great. I use pils DME. You have the last two beers I made that way.
Adam has a 3rd way that has something to do with using the last runnings from the mash and making a starter from that, letting the wort sit over night cold, then pitching.
I almost always try to plan a few brews in a row to reuse the yeast from my lagers as they are such a pain to get enough yeast from.
Lucas,
Did you use yeastcalc or Mr. Malty? If you're starting with a single smack pack, a single-stepped starter is unlikely to be sufficient. You'll either need (at least) 2 packs, or to do a stepped starter, in which case you'll need 1-2 days for the first step to ferment out, 24-36 hours to crash and decant the first step, and then another 1-2 days for the second step. If you have the time, you can then crash and decant, but I doubt that even a 2 liter starter will make much of a difference flavor-wise in a 5 gallon batch.
-Adam
Adam,
I do have time to do the second step, do you just boil more DME, chill, then add to the flask? Or anything special?
Oh... my... god. Why haven't we done this? http://thechive.com/2013/09/17/guys-rig-up-buddies-plumbing-with-beer-wh...
Yup. Chill and decant the beer off your first step, then put in the boiled chilled second-step wort, get the yeast back into suspension and let 'er rip on the stir plate.
Edit: yeastcalc has a very good tool for calculating how large a starter/how much dme you'll need for each step.
Do you just do this in a small pot? Is it ok to use a lid? I sadly don't have a second 2L flask that I could use to make the next set. Sorry, idiot questions here.
Oh... my... god. Why haven't we done this? http://thechive.com/2013/09/17/guys-rig-up-buddies-plumbing-with-beer-wh...
I also only have one 2L flask, so I boil in a 4Q pot (open) and then put the lid on while it's chilling. I haven't had any problems with DMS or other off flavors in the starter while doing this.