{"id":3931,"date":"2010-11-28T14:16:14","date_gmt":"2010-11-28T21:16:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/2beerguys.com\/blog\/?p=3931"},"modified":"2010-11-29T08:28:48","modified_gmt":"2010-11-29T15:28:48","slug":"for-the-love-of-beer-brew-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/2beerguys.com\/blog\/2010\/11\/28\/for-the-love-of-beer-brew-2\/","title":{"rendered":"For The Love of Beer, Brew! #2"},"content":{"rendered":"

Had I only known that a yeast starter would have saved me…<\/strong><\/p>\n

Pitching one tube of yeast with an OG of 1.090 is a not a good\u00a0idea, 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.<\/p>\n

So today, I am making a starter for my next batch. An oak aged Imperial Stout. The guys over at Northern Brewer<\/a> hooked me up with their\u00a0Imperial Stout Extract Kit w\/ Specialty Grains<\/a> along with some American oak cubes, dark hard\u00a0Candi\u00a0sugar, 3lbs of clover honey, and Wyeast 1728 Scottish Ale yeast XL Activator Pack<\/a>.<\/p>\n

While planning this batch, I figured it would probably be\u00a0beneficial 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.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\n

It works damn good for a free\u00a0stir\u00a0plate. 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\u00a0awesome.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

As far as making the starter there’s really nothing special there…<\/div>\n