Yeast Starters

Alright, so I've been talking about these since I've been using them so much lately. Here's the Tesslerfied version. DISCLAIMER: You can find a lot of info about starters by searching the forums at northernbrewer.com or tastybrew.com, and I've probably read most of those (addictive personality), and I encourage you to check those out too. There are different schools of thought about different steps in the process, so just understand, I am by no means an expert and am still figuring this stuff out, but this is what I've learned after killing countless hours reading. So take it with a grain of salt, consider the source, yadda yadda.

MATERIALS:

• 1000 OR 2000 mL Pyrex flask, growler, or 1 gallon cider jug
• small soup or saucepan if you're not using the flask
• scale - preferably one with metric measurements
• dry malt extract (DME) - a 1 lb bag is plenty
• measuring cups
• airlock or foam stopper

METHOD

The whole point is to build your yeast population to a large enough number so that you can reduce lag times, reduce the risk of contamination, and ensure a more complete fermentation. Wyeast smack packs and WhiteLabs tubes are supposed to be pitchable, but for higher gravity beers and lagers starters are almost a necessity. Even smaller brews can benefit from a starter. If you're going to drop the cash and spend the time brewing your beer, why not give it a better chance of being successful right? A starter is just a mini batch of beer, where you're giving your smack pack or whatever more food so that the yeast inside will gorge themselves, multiply their population, and get primed for fermenting your precious wort.

First, you need to determine the size of your starter. If you want to really get technical you can check out the pitching calculator at the Mr.Malty site on my links, but I never do, too technical for me. Basically, you want to make a starter that has an OG of around 1.035 or so. As far as how big you want to go, that depends on your beer. Right now I am building up a culture from the bottom of a bottle of Chimay for a dubbel I'm brewing in the future, so I started with a half-liter starter, let it go for 2 days, then did another half-liter, then I'll step up again to a liter and maybe do that again. For most brews that's probably not necessary, especially if you're starting with a smack pack. Most of the starters I've done have been a liter for beers between 1.040 and 1.065, and 2 liters for bigger brews.

To get a gravity around 1.035, the easiest way to do it is to go metric. A simple ratio of 1 gram DME to 10 mL of water works out to about 1.035. So, measure out 100 grams of DME to 1 liter of water and you're good to go! If you are anti-metric, you'd need a little under 4 ounces DME for 1 quart of water. You can get a cheap digital scale at Target.

Now you're ready to boil, so let's talk containers. You can use one of the Erlenmeyer flasks that Northern Brewer sells (I have one), but it is not a necessity. The advantage to those is that if you have a gas stove or electric coils, you can put the starter mix right in the flask, boil it in the flask, cool it, then dump the yeast in. I have a smoothtop electric stove and have seen Kristen make a Pyrex mixing bowl explode on top of that, so that worries me a little. The other thing I don't like about the flasks is that they are narrow at the top so you can get a really fast volcanic boilover even with the little amount of wort you're boiling, and that's a PITA. I just put it in a saucepan and boil it for 15 minutes. Then I pour the starter into a standard half gallon growler that you can get at any brewpub. A one gallon cider jug would work fine too.

When your starter is cooled enough so that it's no longer warm to the touch I flame the lip of my sanitized growler, put in the sanitized funnel, dump in the yeast, throw the airlock on, and shake like crazy. Some people have stirplates that continously stir the starter which is really good for the yeast, but I just swirl it every time I walk by. The key is to not let your yeast drop out of suspension so that's what the swirling is for. You don't have to go nuts with it, but do it when you can. This keeps the yeast active so that they keep reproducing. Oh yeah baby, asexual reproduction! As far as temperature goes, keep it around room temperature. Some people say you should keep the starter at the same temperature that fermentation of the beer is going to happen, but for a starter you're just building cell counts, so just keep it between 65 and 75 and you're good to go. I keep mine on top of my fridge with a brown paper lunch bag to protect it from light. There's mixed information out there about whether light is bad or good for starters, so I just err on the side of caution.

Now, the big question is, when do you make your starter? There's a lot of conflicting information out there on this one too, and basically the controversy is whether you pitch the whole starter when it's active or do you put the starter in the fridge to crash the yeast and make them settle to the bottom, then pour off the spent wort and just pitch the slurry. I have done both and have noticed the crashed starter took a little longer, but lag time was still under 6 hours. For me, the decision boils down to the size of the starter. If it's bigger than a liter, I'll crash it and decant, if it's a liter or smaller, I pitch the whole thing. I personally prefer having an active starter to pitch, so if I'm going to brew on Saturday, I would make the starter on Wednesday or Thursday. That way I'll have a fairly active starter being pitched into my wort.

Starters do give you some flexibility too. If I made a starter on Thursday but then had to postpone for a week, I would throw the starter in the fridge and then the night before or morning before brewing I would take it out, let it warm up, pour off the spent wort then give it a fresh meal of cooled wort so that it's active. Right now I have half of the yeast cake from my Bourbon Barrel Brown in the back of the fridge. When I know I'm going to use it, I'll wake it up by warming it up to room temperature and then giving it a fresh meal and pitch the whole thing. Well, I see this post has gotten ridiculously long (me, ramble?), so I'll just stop here. Any questions?

Fun with Hopbursting

Sunday was brew day for me. I put together a recipe using "Designing Great Beers" for an American Pale Ale: .5 lb Munich, .5 lb Crystal 40, 6 lbs Pilsen DME, and 5 ounces of Cascade hops. I've been reading about hopbursting, so I decided to give it a shot with this batch. Basically, the idea is to add all of your hops at the end of the boil to maximize flavor and aroma. You still get some bittering, but not tons, so that's why you need to use a lot of hops. I started my additions with 20 minutes left, then did another ounce every 5 minutes.

I did have another minor boilover right away when I added the first 3 lbs of DME. I'm trying to decide for next time if I should drop my boil volume by a gallon or try out some Fermcap (I guess it's supposed to knock out the foam). What would you do? Anybody else having issues with their new full boil setups? I did rig up a pretty sweet windscreen for my burner and kettle. Brian suggested sheet metal, but what I think he suggested (I was drinking at the time) didn't sound like it would work on my rig, so I ended up getting 2 ten inch diameter furnace duct pieces that are 36 inches long. I crimped them together and ended up with an awesome windscreen that goes almost all the way around the burner stand and goes up almost to the top of the kettle to trap in heat, plus it only cost me 8 bucks.

I reused half of the yeast cake that I saved from my Brown ale, which had been in the beer fridge for 3 weeks. I just brought it to room temp while I was brewing but didn't make a starter or anything to wake it up, just poured off the beer from on top, swirled it to get the yeast into suspension, and pitched it. It was probabably about 2 cups of slurry total. Apparently if a yeast cake has been sleeping in the cold for 3 weeks it needs a snack to wake up, because it took 20 hours to start fermenting. I was pretty worried, plus I went to my LHBS to pick up some dry yeast "just in case", but it was closed for President's Day. Fortunately, when I got back home empty handed the yeast was belching out CO2. It is now rocking out and kicking goo into the blowoff tube at a comfortable 60 degrees and it smells awesome!

I'm thinking about maybe brewing a dubbel after I culture the Chimay yeast or another brown ale (probably not oaked) next. Have you seen kit and hop prices at Northern Brewer lately? Holy smokes, it's like 50 bucks for their IPA kits! I did spend a little more at my LHBS when I built my APA recipe, but their hops were still only 2 bucks an ounce. I'm thinking about buying a 33 lb jug of LME to save some cash. Anyone else do or consider bulk buys?

I know at least Jeremy brewed this weekend, how did your brew day go?

Super Bowl Sunday

Way to go Giants! I am so happy to see that cheater Bellichek get beat. Anyways, I haven't brewed in a while, just done some menial brewing chores. I have really been enjoying drinking my homebrews.

• I'm on the last minikeg of Deported Stout, and I will be sad to see it go. I remember when I first started drinking this batch and it had some bad fusels, headache city. Now I taste the big roasted and chocolatey malt, and it still has a big hop kick to it too.
• The 618 2IPA is also just getting better and better. This beer is 97 IBUs! I'm lucky to be on heartburn meds, otherwise I would be really suffering after a bomber of this one. Definitely my best IPA so far.
• The Blonde Abbey is also tasting really good. I picked up a mix and match 6er a couple of weeks ago and grabbed a Leffe Blonde (what NB's Lefse Blonde kit is supposed to copy) and an Affligem Blonde. My beer is really close to the Affligem, so I'm stoked that my first Belgian turned out as good as it did.
• The Full Monty Cherry Bitter has been a pleasant surprise. When I bottled this, the sample tasted like it was going to be a dumped batch, it totally tasted like ass. I carbed it pretty high and let it sit for a month before I started drinking it, and now it's actually pretty good. It finished pretty dry, probably because of the pound of brown sugar to boost gravity. You can definitely taste the tartness of the Montmorency cherries contrasting with the bitterness of the hops. It's not my best beer, but considering what I thought it was going to be, I'm pretty happy that it's totally drinkable and actually enjoyable.
• I bottled my Bourbon Barrel Brown today, and I am super excited about this one! If you remember from the last post, I designed this beer from scratch with "Designing Great Beers". I had steamed an ounce of oak chips and soaked them in 5 ounces of Maker's Mark bourbon for about a month, and just racked the beer into secondary on top of the oak chips and bourbon last Tuesday. I pulled a sample Friday night and I could definitely taste the oak, so I knew it was time to bottle. I actually left about 30 ounces of this in the bottling bucket just so that I could drink this today. The oak is pretty obvious, but you can totally taste the hops and malty goodness too. If it tastes this good on bottling day, I've got very high hopes for this when it's carbed. It will be hard to keep this one in the house.
• On the non-homebrew front, I've been drinking some Abita TurboDog lately, and I highly recommend this American Brown Ale. It's super tasty.

What are you drinking?

My First Outdoor Brew Session

After Mother Nature forced me to abort my New Year's Day brewing, I finally got around to brewing yesterday. As I mentioned in my last entry, I was debating what to do with my starters, and I decided to toss them in the fridge on Tuesday or Wednesday. On Friday night I brought out the Wee Heavy's starter (Wyeast 1728 - Scottish Ale), warmed it up to room temperature, poured off the spent wort, then added another cup and half of DME boiled in 1500 mL of water. That got it going super active by Saturday morning. The Wee Heavy is actually sending massive amounts of foam and stuff through the blowoff tube as we speak, I've had to suck water out of the pitcher full of sanitizer that my blowoff tubes run into twice already today. The American Brown is also active, but not as much as the Wee Heavy. I think one of the reasons is that I also poured off the spent wort on that starter (Wyeast 1056 - American Ale) but didn't step it up because the Brown isn't as big as the Wee Heavy and also just pitched the slurry. Normally I pitch the whole starter when it's active. Regardless, the Brown's lag time was about 6 hours, but the Wee Heavy was only 2. Knowing that there's less time for bad bugs to take hold in my beer is reason enough for me to use starters.

Back to the brewing. I got off to a little bit of a late start, but I hooked up the propane, did a leak test, poured in 6 gallons, and turned it on full blast. I had read that for brewing in an aluminum pot you should boil just water in it first to create the dark gray coating on the inside of the kettle, so that's what I did. I was a little disappointed in the boil time though. It took about 25 minutes or so to bring it to a good boil. I was hoping for a little less, but there was a pretty good wind all day, which probably (hopefully) had some effect. I actually shoveled a big snowbank as a windbreak when I started but then the wind shifted and kept shifting all day so I just said screw it. After about 30 minutes I got impatient and hooked up the wort chiller. That was impressive! I got the water down to 75 degrees in about 12 minutes. I realize the water's pretty cold in winter, but if I can get anywhere close to that in the summer I will be happy.

I started the American Brown Ale right after that, pouring 5.5 gallons into the kettle plus the half gallon I steeped my specialty grains in. I thought this would be fine since I lost about a half gallon during my test boil, but when I added the malt extract that brought the level up too high. I was dangerously close to a boil over for about 10 minutes. Things settled down for a while but when I threw the flavor and aroma hops, my late addition extract, and the chiller to sterilize, I did have a minor boilover. Not as big of a deal as indoors on the stove, but it's still not cool. A 30 quart brewpot is not quite enough to boil 6 gallons without worrying about boilovers, but it's still a major improvement over the little pot I was using on the stove.

While that was chilling I was sanitizing my siphon and collecting water for the next boil, and while I was pitching the yeast on the Brown I had started the Wee Heavy's boil, this time with 5 gallons of water plus the half gallon of steeping grain water. The Wee Heavy was weird though because I didn't lose that much volume over the course of the boil. Maybe because I added 12 pounds of liquid extract? Mwahaha. That is going to be a huge beer.

Overall, brewing outside is pretty awesome. Even though I think my burner is not super powerful, I still dropped the time it takes to make a batch quite a bit. Plus, it was only 20 bucks, so what the hell. It took a little less than 2 hours from the time I started boiling water to pitching the yeast. I think that if I build a windscreen of some sort I might be able to drop that a little more, so I'm happy. Kristen's happy because the house doesn't stink, and cleanup is easier since I can just hose off the patio. In addition, since you're not supposed to use oxiclean, bleach, or other harsh chemicals on aluminum pots, cleanup is even easier and faster since I just add some hot water and mild soap and wipe it down with a rag, give it a rinse, and I'm done. I'm still debating whether I should drill a hole in my brewpot and add a valve to make transferring the wort into the fermenter faster, but the new high capacity auto siphon I got only takes about 5 minutes, so I don't know how much time I would actually save, although if I let the cool wort splash into the fermenter through the funnel I might be able to skip shaking the crap out of the carboy to aerate.

Anybody else do some brewing this weekend?

Mission Aborted

Happy New Year!

My original plan for this break was to bottle my cherry beer (The Full Monty) first, then brew my Bourbon Brown and a Wee Heavy. I was dying to finally test the new turkey fryer and the immersion chiller and new glass primary (#2) that Santa brought me. Because of family stuff and food induced laziness, the bottling was put off even before Kris Kringle visited. To get in the brewing spirit, Eli and I made a pilgrimage to Northern Brewer last Friday, where I picked up their Wee Heavy kit and the ingredients for an American Brown Ale that I designed. He's an awesome little helper; he had a lot of fun helping me pick out my grains and run the mill in the grain room. I made both yeast starters on Saturday morning and also steamed an ounce of oak chips that are steeping in 5 ounces of Makers Mark right now, waiting to be tossed in the secondary of the brown ale. The plan was to brew both batches on New Year's Day, but the temp never got above 5 degrees today. That's too cold for me to stand outside and brew 2 batches, so I bitched out. Instead, I bottled The Full Monty today, and set up my turkey fryer stand and the hoses and fittings for the immersion chiller. So, brew day has been moved to Saturday.

I do have 2 questions for the loyal readers of this blog (all 2 of you): Do you use yeast starters? If so, how often? I'm trying to figure out what to do with the starters I made. They'll be 7 days old by the time they're pitched, so they'll be dormant I'm guessing. Should I let them ferment out for another day, then toss them in the fridge and maybe add some more DME on Friday? Or, should I just let them hang out and pitch them as is?

Preparing for the break

Alright, so it's almost Christmas break and I'm trying to make room for the inaugural batches that I hope to brew on my new burner. Here's what I've been up to:

• Last Friday I bottled my Abbey Blonde Ale. Originally this was Northern Brewer's Lefse Blonde kit but I dropped it down to 4 gallons because my 6 gallon primary was occupied and I wanted to bump up the gravity. I think this was the first beer I ever brewed that I didn't rack to secondary. At the time I was reading on various forums that many brewers do this to let the yeast finish the job, so I figured what the heck. When I was bottling it didn't look super clear, but the yeast was pretty flocculant so I didn't bring too much of the cake to the bottling bucket when I racked it. We'll see what happens after conditioning. Has anyone out there skipped the secondary? Do you do it often? Just curious.
• On Sunday I racked my British Bitter to secondary on top of some cherries. This beer started out as Northern Brewer's British Bitter kit but I added an extra half pound of DME and a pound of brown sugar just for fun. I didn't feel like springing for the Oregon beer-specific can of cherries, and was worried that the cherry juice I was eyeing would dilute my precious brew, so I ended up using 4 14.5 ounce cans of Oregon Fruit Products Tart Cherry pie filling. They're Montmorency cherries packed in water, no preservatives, no added sugar. I'm going to call this one "The Full Monty". I made a stupid mistake though: when I racked into the secondary I filled it up pretty much to the top and after a few hours I noticed that the beer has now traveled about 6 inches up my blowoff tube. Whoops! I'm pretty happy that I did think ahead and throw the blowoff tube on instead of the airlock though, otherwise I'd have a pretty big mess on my hands. I'm hoping to bottle this one right after Christmas.
• Last weekend I picked up "Designing Great Beers" by Ray Daniels. Wow. What. An. Awesome. Book. It has a ridiculous amount of information and charts and graphs that are way over my head, but the second part of the book breaks down each individual style, gives a history of how the style evolved, and then analyzes beers from that style that made it to the second round of the National Homebrew Competition in 1993 and 1994. That makes it a little dated, but not enough to detract from the book's value. Daniels then looks at all those recipes and tells you that X% used X malt in X quantity, and X% of the beers used X ounces of X hops at X time during the boil, etc. It's a really cool book. I can see using this for the rest of my brewing career. It's got a ton of information that I can use right now to get away from kits with some confidence, but enough technical information to keep me busy if I ever figure out what the hell he's talking about. I strongly recommend you pick this up, you won't be disappointed.

What brews do you have on deck?

Hop Shortage

So I had the pleasure of spending a few hours at the Town Hall Brewery in Minneapolis on Saturday night. I ate their 7 Corners burger with smoked bacon and oatmeal stout BBQ sauce and washed it down with many many beers. I tried their Wee Heavy and Amarillo Amber with dinner, then Black H20 stout, Hope & King Scotch Ale, another Wee Heavy, and another Amarillo Amber while throwing darts.

As we're throwing darts, a guy sitting by the fireplace behind us asks us if we know a guy we work with, turns out he's from the same town. This guy (can't remember the name, a little hazy by that time) turns out to be the bar manager (I think) and we get in a conversation about the brewing operation.

The hop shortage ended up being a pretty big part of the conversation, and he told me that pint prices would be going up by less than a buck on some beers as a result. The thing that struck me though was that despite all the freaking out I've been reading about on various forums, Town Hall is expanding. Again, my memory is hazy, but I'm pretty sure the guy said they were going to be doubling their capacity to keep up with demand. So even though hops may be hard to come by for a while, good beer is still being made.

What are you making or drinking right now?