First Steps To Liquid Yeast

[AdeDunn]

Typical...

The 3 litre flask is too tall to fit in our fridge. lol The 2 litre JUST fits.

 

[yeastinfection]

I found this with the 3l as well due to the thick base. Assuming you've got Neodymium magnets in your stir plate then the fault is with the stir bar. The AlNiCo magnets in them are pretty crap. To solve this I bought a five pack of these rare-earth Samarium-Cobalt stir bars from a private seller on ebay and wow, huge difference. When I dropped one in the 3l flask it instantly centered itself with no encouragement required and I could run the plate at full blast without it chucking the bar, or even looking likely to chuck it. Plus it was so well planted that it was more or less silent with no rattling sound.

do you have an ebay link, i searched but only came up with normal stir bars

 

[Saisonator]

I found this with the 3l as well due to the thick base. Assuming you've got Neodymium magnets in your stir plate then the fault is with the stir bar. The AlNiCo magnets in them are pretty crap. To solve this I bought a five pack of these rare-earth Samarium-Cobalt stir bars from a private seller on ebay and wow, huge difference. When I dropped one in the 3l flask it instantly centered itself with no encouragement required and I could run the plate at full blast without it chucking the bar, or even looking likely to chuck it. Plus it was so well planted that it was more or less silent with no rattling sound.

I just fitted a new fan to mine and raised the rare earth magnets closer to the surface with some plastic sandwiched between fan and magnets.
Works fine now in the 3 litre flask now.

 

[BeerCat]

do you have an ebay link, i searched but only came up with normal stir bars

Same here. Am desperate for more RPM's.

 

[foxbat]

do you have an ebay link, i searched but only came up with normal stir bars

It was a private seller with just the one pack to sell. Best prices I've seen on the net are linked in post #309 in the big stir plate thread.

https://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/...-less-than-ten-quid.65471/page-16#post-744644

 

[BeerCat]

I am going to buy some so if you want to join me Ade or anyone else? Will save money on spraymalt in the long run.

 

[AdeDunn]

I am going to buy some so if you want to join me Ade or anyone else? Will save money on spraymalt in the long run.

Yeah, why not, I'm in. Beats buying far more than I need, and if it does a better job than the ones that came with my stir plate... :thumb: I've already noticed that I have to turn the stir plate a fair way up to get the stir bar to start moving even in my 2 litre flask. Seems I have to break the resistance from friction before it'll move, then I can turn it down again.

I still have quite a few bags of spraymalt in my brewing draws (I have a set of plastic draws where I keep things like spraymalt, brewing sugar, smaller bits of equipment, huge bag of coriander.....). Main thing stopping me now is the lack of temperature control. Most of the liquid yeasts seem to have a max temp of 20 degrees C.... lol

 

[foxbat]

By the way my rare-earth stir bars are the 12x4.5mm cylinder variety. They came in a "Fisherbrand" bag but the product photo on the camlab site is identical to the one on the Fisher Scientific site so they should be the same. Even though these bars are the smallest I have they still easily created a full vortex in a test volume of water in the 3l flask with the stirrer on full blast and were almost silent compared to the others that rattle a lot and then chuck themselves to the side if you go too fast. Rattling is an audible sign of instability.