November 28th, 2010
beer . Homebrewing
For The Love of Beer, Brew! #2
Had I only known that a yeast starter would have saved me…
Pitching one tube of yeast with an OG of 1.090 is a not a good idea, but pitching a tube of yeast that is dead…you get the idea. I ended up saving the batch by pitching three packets of US-05; I probably could have gotten away with two but I didn’t want to chance it.
So today, I am making a starter for my next batch. An oak aged Imperial Stout. The guys over at Northern Brewer hooked me up with their Imperial Stout Extract Kit w/ Specialty Grains along with some American oak cubes, dark hard Candi sugar, 3lbs of clover honey, and Wyeast 1728 Scottish Ale yeast XL Activator Pack.
While planning this batch, I figured it would probably be beneficial if I had a stir plate to make my starter with, so I did a little research and found lots of good tutorials on how to make them from an old hard drive and a computer fan. This was great because I had both of them lying in old computer parts bins, actually I had every part I needed including a 1.5″ stir bar.
It works damn good for a free stir plate. The only thing I’m not sure on is if the lights in the fan will have any effect on the yeast. Either way it looks awesome.
- Measure out 2000ml of waster and 1.5cups of light DME.
- Boil for 15 minutes and cool to ~70F.
- Pour into, in this case, a sanitized .5 gallon growler. ( a 2000L flask would be good as well)
- Shake a lot, add the sanitized stir bar.
- Smack the Activator pack 3 hrs prior to making the starter.
- Pour in the yeast. I used a large sanitized funnel.
- Place sanitized aluminum foil over the top loosely.
- Get it on the Stir plate and spinning.
For the Love of Beer, #$@%*&%$ BREW!