I don’t mind doing them much, but I’m so lazy I’ll avoid it if possible. Dry as much as possible, but I make a lot of Belgian styles and I just haven’t found a good dry yeast for those. Just made a 1.076 tripel. Used 2 packs of WY3787 and got results with almost no effort.
250 grams of DME in 1.5 liters is closer to 1.061.
While I am no expert on southern cooking somehow it doesn’t surprise me that an Alabaman gets his mayonaisse by the gallon. Keep the tater salad and cole slaw coming Tommy!
What I find easy for me is SNS starters without fretting too much about getting the timing of the krausen just right.
Bwahahahahaha! Yer makin’ us look bad Tommy!
Do you aerate or oxygenate the wort when you do this?
No, not bad, delicious!
Nope. At least not intentionally. I assume pumping to the fermenter gives it some.
Likewise I am lazy when it comes to making starters. I’d rather pitch a fresh smack pack into a lower gravity wort and then harvest the yeast. Or use dry yeast and harvest. Have you tried the Lallemand Abbaye Ale? Or the Fermentis one? You don’t like them? I’m looking for a more fruity less phenolic Belgian yeast.
No I haven’t because I’ve been so disappointed by dry Belgian yeasts in the past. Probably should but multiple packs works so well that I don’t have a lot of incentive. Personally, I prefer more phenolic, less fruity.
Static! Oh I’m so angry about you getting good results from your yeast practices. 
Ah Okay. Thanks for your input. I’ll stop derailing the thread now.
I’m becoming increasingly convinced that a starter isn’t necessary, except in certain circumstances (an old pouch or a high-gravity wort). Direct-pitching a fresh pouch into well-oxygenated wort is working fine for me. The wort in my Fermonster is a 6-gallon starter, is it not?
In the scheme of things, the increase in cell count from a 1-2L starter is negligible. Maybe there’s an increase in health/viability, but why wouldn’t I get this increase from the main wort as long as it’s well-oxygenated? I’m not sure I see the point anymore in making a tiny batch of beer to put into a larger batch of beer.
I agree. The yeast manufactures have not only increased cell counts but have also figured out a way to keep fresher yeast available. That hasn’t always been the case. Wyeast was around in the mid 90’s for homebrewers and their pitch rate was abysmal. It still made beer! (usually). But when folks started making starters they found it made better beer! I remember when White Labs first started selling to homebrewers in “Pitchable” quantities. I don’t recall the cell counts but they still needed starters to get where the expectation was consistent.
Over the last 10 years or so cell counts have increased and quality and viability has improved so you don’t see the cry out for starters any longer… until there is a problem. Then it’s all “well, how old was the yeast. Did you make a starter?”
I am just gonna sit back and bask in the glow my new and improved AHA reputation [emoji41]
I just hope it is a “Duke’s” Mayo jar …
As Mark has pointed out, it’s not really cell count you’re going for in a SNS starter. It’s activity. A traditional stir plate starter is about cell count.
I use both methods. Stir plate and SNS have always worked fine for me. When I make a starter, I usually go with whichever one I feel like at the time. But I also use the same schedule for both. Make the starter the night before. Confirm in the morning that there’s activity. Brew the beer and pitch the entire starter. I do this with both stir plate and SNS.
To be completely honest, I do not think that making a starter is even necessary with most modern liquid cultures when pitched into six gallons of well-aerated wort or less. They all contain at least 100 million viable cells at time of packaging. Omega and Imperial cultures less than six months old are good to go right out of the package. Fresh White Labs and Wyeast cultures are direct pitch as well. It was not all that long ago that yeast cultures containing 30 million viable cells at time of packaging were considered to be direct pitch. The only advantage a starter provides with a modern culture is that it gives the culture time to come out of quiescence and replenish ergosterol and unsaturated fatty reserves before being pitched.
As far as to SNS, it has always been more about simplifying the process and reducing out of pocket expense because a one-gallon glass jug is a lot cheaper than a stir plate and Erlenmeyer flask, and that is if one cannot repurpose a jug that contained apple juice or filtered apple cider vinegar. For apple cider vinegar that was packaged with the mother, it is a probably good idea to purchase a replacement cap (or at least pressure cook the existing cap for 15 minutes at 15 psi to render it absolutely sterile before using it the first time).
You should be using a solution that is 5 to 10 percent malt sugar weight by volume (w/v). That translates to 50 to 100 grams of DME to 1L water. If you want the shortest lag period from a new culture, you wait no longer than 24 hours before pitching a starter. What you are doing is pitching into 17% w/v wort and then allowing the culture to ferment out, which places it in a state of quiescence where the cells have undergone morphological changes to help them survive starvation. Those changes have to be reversed before the culture can go about replenishing ergosterol and unsaturated fatty reserves (UFA). Pitching a starter at high krausen ensures that the culture has reached the maximum cell count possible in the medium, but has not wasted ergosterol and UFA reserves that will need to be replenished when pitched.
I believe that you should read my article entitled “Yeast Culture are Like Nuclear Weapons” (Yeast Cultures are Like Nuclear Weapons | Experimental Brewing). It will help you to understand how yeast biomass grows and why precise pitching rates are not critical. What is critical is yeast cell health, a good carbon source (sugar is carbon bound to water), and dissolved O2.
LOL.
Well, the static part was more about how we have Sacro here (we need a new name that’s easier to spell like Big Sac or something :P) telling us about SNS and I’m clearly not listening. Cheers.