Starter for bottle harested yeast help

[jceg316]

Cheers guys, not having much experience with DME, I was thinking that the light would be better as more neutral is this not the case? I'm not brewing for competitions either and brew for the end result for me. but thought the light extract would be less of an influence to the end result or due to the small amount used does it not matter?

Good tips about the wort from a batch prior to the one your using the harvested yeast on Myqul :) If only Id have known last week I could have saved some!

Cheers
Jay :)

Someone with a bit more experience than me on this, please do correct me if I'm wrong, but for pale beers (IPAs, pales, lagers etc) then yes light DME is the most neutral. Ideally you'd want the same wort for your starter and the brew. So if you are making a stout, dark DME is preferable, although light DME will probably have no effect on a stout, whereas it's more likely a dark coloured DME will have more of a colour effect on a pale beer.

Also, might be worth looking into, Mikkeller recommends apple juice for starters. Once the sugars ferment out, it's supposed to be pretty neutral.

 

[MyQul]

Someone with a bit more experience than me on this, please do correct me if I'm wrong, but for pale beers (IPAs, pales, lagers etc) then yes light DME is the most neutral. Ideally you'd want the same wort for your starter and the brew. So if you are making a stout, dark DME is preferable, although light DME will probably have no effect on a stout, whereas it's more likely a dark coloured DME will have more of a colour effect on a pale beer.

Also, might be worth looking into, Mikkeller recommends apple juice for starters. Once the sugars ferment out, it's supposed to be pretty neutral.

Apple juice for starters? Never heard of that before. Google here I come to do a bit of reading up on it...................

 

[jceg316]

Apple juice for starters? Never heard of that before. Google here I come to do a bit of reading up on it...................

I got the Mikkeller book for my last birthday, here's what it says about the yeast starter:

"A simple way of making a yeast starter is to put 1 litre of pasteurised apple juice into a freezer bag, add a sachet of yeast and tie the bag closed. The sugar in the apple juice begins to ferment and the CO2 is able to escape because the bag is not sealed."

Just to confirm - "sachet" in this sense is a reference to WLP or Wyeast as these are the only yeasts he uses in his recipes. IIRC he touts the whole "liquid yeast is better than dry" thing.

 

[MyQul]

I got the Mikkeller book for my last birthday, here's what it says about the yeast starter:

"A simple way of making a yeast starter is to put 1 litre of pasteurised apple juice into a freezer bag, add a sachet of yeast and tie the bag closed. The sugar in the apple juice begins to ferment and the CO2 is able to escape because the bag is not sealed."

Just to confirm - "sachet" in this sense is a reference to WLP or Wyeast as these are the only yeasts he uses in his recipes. IIRC he touts the whole "liquid yeast is better than dry" thing.

After a bit og google-fu I discovered that even though it will work it's not as good as using DME/your own wort like I do, as the sugars aren't quite the right sort. There was little to no info out there on it that I could find tbh.

 

[YeastFace]

I've heard of using Apple Juice for Lactobacillus starters, but not yeast.

 

[jceg316]

I can't find much either, but makes sense as it's different sugar that the yeast is used to. I don't think I'll try right now as I'm just getting the hang of starters.

 

[jceg316]

An update for these starters as the beers are ready to drink now. And in case anyone discovers this thread...

The stout with the SO4 fermented really well, very active for 2 weeks and fermented down very low to 1.008 (OG was 1.051). Beer tastes really good, a sessionable oatmeal stout.

The lager yeast was actually Hefeweizen yeast, it turns out. It got off to a slow start but kicked off vigorously after 2 days. It did stop around 1.021 or so, but after rousing the yeast it got going again and finished in another 4 days. My now hefe tastes good and that lull is usually due to lack of O2 in the wort. The yeast is really shining through.

All in all a great success.