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Is a liquid yeast starter necessary

Started by beanstalk, December 18, 2016, 02:08:50 PM

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mac2k

Quote from: DEMPSEY on December 18, 2016, 08:12:16 PM
You mentioned that homebrew taste :o. Before you look at your yeast you need to start with your water. Poor water quality will lead to poor beer. After that you need to get an understanding of the right amount of yeast to pitch.

I know I'm late on this thread (Newbie) but total agree.  I have just done 5 batches to date. one Kit and 4 simple extracts plus LME or DME or both.  I have a decent pallet, have tried plenty of craft beers and to be honest, I am really enjoying my very simple extracts and the quality so far has been Excellent.  I think it's down to the water.  I have terrible water (South Meath), hard as nails.  I have a softener, that removes all the limescale and I use an inline drinking filter for all the water that goes into my brews.....  so far so good.  I am only using dry yeast (Stock Coopers APA) at the moment.

Perhaps a brew with purchased water...  5 x 5Ltr  Use the same ingredients and see if it tastes better


beerfly

Her comments do make some sense, when growing yeast it's idealy in multiples of 10. So to get growth out of a starter you would be looking at at least a 5l starter.
Less then that is like overpitching. Enough food for them to wake up and get going but not enough to get the exponential growth needed to produce a fully healthy generation.

beanstalk

I ended up using wlp001 in a 22l APA with an OG of 1.048. It kicked off after about 18 hours and within a week it was down to 1.010! Its bottled now but the taste was very clean.

The yeast was dated to December and used in mid Jan so fresh enough I guess.

Going to try a lager yeast next straight pitch and try and keep below 1.050, but so far the results are promising!

neoanto

I was looking on the White labs site.
They specifically say a starter is not necessary with the purepitch for 1 vial and an SG of 1.050 or less.
For 2 vials no starter is required for 1.065 or less.
They say you can do it. If you want to decrease lag time.

Leann ull

Based on lots of assumptions around freshness and storage. Try it and prove it, I like to know from a liquid starter even overnight that my yeast isn't straining because I overshot in my brewday numbers or had substandard yeast to start

Ciaran

I brewed a 1.060+ IPA last month.  I pitched 1 pack of pure pitch WLP001 direct.  Haven't seen yeast take off like it before without doing a starter.  Amazing stuff.

imark

I've had opposite experience with recent white labs packs. First generation very sluggish and under-attenuation even with starter. Second generation was fine though.

Maybe you got a really fresh pack that stayed chilled during transport

Leann ull

Yeast is a living thing, as Brewers we have no real way of know it's viability unless you do a starter. I do them for peace of mind to save wasting a 5 hour brewday, each to his or her own