yeast starter

[steveb]

Is thig a water sugar solution to get the yeasties feeding?
And do you use some of the recommended sugar or additional?

 

[Aleman]

Is thig a water sugar solution to get the yeasties feeding?
And do you use some of the recommended sugar or additional?

No A yeast starter is a mini batch of wort . . . sugar and water contains nothing that the yeast need for reproduction and growth . . . apart from energy . . . A yeast starter needs Amino acids, Fatty acids and maltose . . . . and is really only of benefit to liquid yeasts and culturing bottle conditioned yeasts . . . Using a yeast starter with dry yeast defeats the purpose of using dry yeast.

 

[Bribie]

Commercial dried yeasts are 'primed and ready to go' and don't really need starting, although a lot of home brewers 'rehydrate' the yeast in tepid water to bring it back to life, then pitch.

However as stated above, if you are culturing up a batch of yeast from a bottle or a sample you have been keeping, you need to feed it on something. I use a German 1L Schott lab bottle which can be sterilised at high temperature, and make a mini wort from just some spray malt diluted to resemble a beer wort, boil it and cool the whole thing to around 20 degrees and add the yeast sample to the bottle.

Then for the next couple of days I shake it whenever I walk past (some guys build magnetic plate stirrers etc) and when it's built up a good krausen and has multiplied enough, I pitch it into the fermenter with the wort.

I don't usually take the small amount of spray malt into account as far as the recipe is concerned as it's only a couple of heaped tablespoons.