homebrewandbeer.com

Hi all,

I am planning on doing my first lager brew tomorrow evening and have just made a yeast starter form a dry yeast pack of saflager W34/70 (as per instructions on the How To Brew section of this website). A couple of questions (probably should have asked before I did the starter but oh well!! )

1. The starter has started bubbling after about 10 mins - is this normal? The instructions just stated within 24 hours!

2. How long will the starter last - if it stops bubbling before I pitch it is it still ok to pitch or do I somehow need to "revitalise" it or will it be dead ! (I plan to pitch at about 12C and then ferment at 10C)

Cheers,

hadders

Never fear! Palmer is here.

I've also found the following useful:

http://www.maltosefalcons.com/tech/

Hadders - you're doing fine... the dry yeast has trehalose built in to give a nice kick start to the dry yeast when you rehydrate it in water. You should have seen a pavlova like foam appear soon after adding to water. Just remember that whilst you can make a lager yeast starter at room temps, you need to make sure that you ferment the beer with this starter at lager temps (10 to 13C) in order to get full lager flavour notes in the final product.
Fermenting lagers at high (ale like) temps will substantially increase the risk of solventy fusels and fruity esters being present in the beer.

Cheers,
TL

Thanks TL (again!!),

Seems I am quizzing you on two posts... So should I reduce the temperature of my starter to 12C if that will be the temp of the wort when I pitch?

At the moment it is just in a 750ml bottle at room temp (21C) bubbling away...

Cheers,

1. The starter has started bubbling after about 10 mins - is this normal? The instructions just stated within 24 hours!

not normal, but nothing to worry about. Sometimes the yeast gets a bit eager and gets going before you expect it to.
Also, it may be bubbling for other reasons than fermentation: if you shook up the bottle, it may have released some dissolved gas. either way, dont worry, relax and have a homebrew.The fastest bubbling I've got was from a culture of wYeast Flying Dog Ale yeast. Got going in about 15mins and after 30mins the krausen was gushing out the top of the bottle. At this stage I took it off my desk and put it in the shed in an icecream bucket! . this stuff has made some really good beer and even better ... I still have a culture left in the fridge .

2. How long will the starter last - if it stops bubbling before I pitch it is it still ok to pitch or do I somehow need to "revitalise" it or will it be dead ! (I plan to pitch at about 12C and then ferment at 10C)

It won't be dead, but leaving it long enough will slow it down. Making another starter from the yeast in the old starter would be your safest bet, but you may be OK without this. I've never actually left a starter too long so can't comment much. I guess the trick is to plan your brew times so that the starter is ready when you want to brew.

If you let it ferment out, the yeast goes dormant and drops out of solution. To make a new starter, tip off the "beer" and then resuspend the sediment and pour that into your new starter. Or just pitch the sediment, which is somewhat akin to pitching a sachet of dried yeast; the lag will be longer but you're still pitching enough yeast cells to get the job done.

Hi rwh,

I actually pitched the yeast early this morning before I had chance to read your post....

I got the wort ready last night and put fermenter (topped up to 23L) in the fridge to cool - temp was at 12C at 6am so got the starter - which was bubbling very very slowly....

I shook the bottle up, poured into fermenter and then gave a good stir before putting back in fridge and set fridgemate to 10C....

How long before the wort is "ruined" if the yeast doesn't kick in?

ie if when I get home tonight at about 7pm there is no action in the airlock - can I still pitch another dry yeast??

Thanks for everyone's help!!

Hopefully next time I will get my timings a bit better!!

Cheers

Recipe:

1 very green homebrewer

Add - lots of great advice from homebrewandbeer.com/forum

Final result - lots of fine beer (hopefully!) and a more experienced homebrewer!

hadders wrote:ie if when I get home tonight at about 7pm there is no action in the airlock - can I still pitch another dry yeast??

Yep. Don't forget to check for other signs of fermentations see the sticky at the top of this forum. Also, Relax, Don't Worry Have A Home Brew.

Cheers,
Greg

cheers Greg....

A bit paranoid it being my first lager!

I'd give it at least 24 hours before you draw any conclusions. I suspect it'll be OK.

rwh wrote:If you let it ferment out, the yeast goes dormant and drops out of solution. To make a new starter, tip off the "beer" and then resuspend the sediment and pour that into your new starter. Or just pitch the sediment, which is somewhat akin to pitching a sachet of dried yeast; the lag will be longer but you're still pitching enough yeast cells to get the job done.

My understanding is that this is wrong. The live yeast, is in suspension in the liquid on top. The yeast dropped out of suspension in my opinion is 'no longer'. But i would just pitch the lot.

Thanks everyone (again...!!),

There is condensation on the lid, and I think there is some action! I don't want to check it too often as the temp will keep changing in the fridge - somebody needs to invent a video beer monitor - similar to a baby monitor but one that will work inside a fridge! (Perhaps a wireless, condensation-proof web-cam would do the trick... or perhaps I'm getting a bit carried away!).

I did pitch the whole lot so will see what result I get..

Cheers....

You could get a small web cam or such like and a remote light that flicks on when you hit the look see button on the camera.

Cheers,
Greg

Cheers Greg,

Nice idea but I have a feeling if I get that sort of setup for my beer before I do for my 2 daughters then my homebrewing days may be over... and there's no way I could live without my homebrew (or the 3 girls in my life - obviously!)

morgs wrote:My understanding is that this is wrong. The live yeast, is in suspension in the liquid on top. The yeast dropped out of suspension in my opinion is 'no longer'. But i would just pitch the lot.

Then how do liquid yeasts work? They're dormant inside the packet until you pop the nutrient sachet inside. The same goes for starters. Once the food is gone, the yeast goes dormant and drops out of solution. It may be dormant, but it's not dead. The same goes for pitching onto the yeast cake or repitching trub into a new brew.

morgs wrote:

rwh wrote:If you let it ferment out, the yeast goes dormant and drops out of solution. To make a new starter, tip off the "beer" and then resuspend the sediment and pour that into your new starter. Or just pitch the sediment, which is somewhat akin to pitching a sachet of dried yeast; the lag will be longer but you're still pitching enough yeast cells to get the job done.

My understanding is that this is wrong. The live yeast, is in suspension in the liquid on top. The yeast dropped out of suspension in my opinion is 'no longer'. But i would just pitch the lot.

My understanding is that if you let it ferment out (or drop the temerature down), to allow the yeast to drop out of solution, & then only pitch the slurry, is that you lower of risk passing on ester's from the starter into the beer? It's not a real issue with ales, but a different story when it comes to lagers?

That's correct. You really don't want to pass on the crappy-tasting "beer" from the starter (unless you fermented it under similar conditions to how you'll ferment your beer).

I checked the fermenter this morning (24 hours after pitching yeast) and although there was no obvious action in the airlock, there was condensation on the lid, and there appeared to be the white "trub" forming at the bottom.

Will pop out today and get a spare saflager 34/70 just in case, but hopefully won't be needed.

Can anybody tell me, with a lager brewing at 10C, will the airlock ever be bubbling regularly (ie more than a couple of times a minute), or will it always be very slow (thus the reason for taking longer to ferment)..

Cheers

With my current lager fermenting at 11°C, it bubbles about ever 10 seconds or so. And that's with the W34/70.

Cheers rwh,

How long ago did you pitch the yeast??