What’s the consensus on making starters for lagers? My ales always get thrown on the stir plate at room temp. I toss all the beer away and just pitch the yeast cake. I got to thinking, would it be a mistake to ferment lager starters at room temp? Rigging a stir plate in a temp controlled environment would be a bit of a pain for me.
Certainly I could put it in the coolest place in the house. How important do you think it is to actually grow the starters in the low 50 degree range?
We started a small focus group in our club to gain mastery of brewing German and Czech Pils and of course i want to make the best beer possible for the ultimate tasting meeting. I will have temp control for the primary fermentation and lagering phases. I just wonder how important that would be for the starter.
The purpose of a starter is to grow yeast, not make beer, and yeast grows better at warmer temps. I’ve made all my lager starters at room temp with no il effects, so that’s what I’d recommend. Also, I’ve put my stir plate away in favor of the 1 qt. “shaken not stirred” starter method. Much easier and results at least as good, if not better, than with the stir plate.
I always grow mine at room temp, stepped up from 2L to 3L usually and crashed/decanted. I’m not sure how I feel about the “shaken not stirred” method for lagers yet.
Denny, Thanks for the quick feedback oh ye of no life. I kind of was thinking that, but you never know. There are some great lager makers out there and I just thought it would be fun to ask if anybody is even concerned with starter temps.
you know, I tried this for a lager and it came out too fruity for my liking - moderate notes of banana in it - possibly a sign of stress and/or underpitching. I make lagers all the time and don’t usually have this issue. I went back to using a stir plate on the next lager and voila - back to high quality.
I think SNS has its place for ales, but I’m not convinced with lagers…
I’ve been doing SNS lager starters for a year now with excellent results. But I do 2 qt. starters for lagers (1 qt. for ales) in 6 gal. batches (with starter).
I agree, pitching at high krausen has it’s benefits. However, an underpitch is an underpitch, high krausen or not.
That said, I’ve done a lot of reading and contemplating the SNS method, and I see practical and theoretical advantages and disadvantages to both SNS and the stirplate method. I choose to stay with the stirplate, even though it is less convenient. 2l for most ales, 2l 2 step for most lagers. In either case, I make the starters in advance, then store them until I’m ready to use them. I then decant, bring to room temp, add 1l of wort and let it come to high krausen while I’m brewing (no stirplate), and pitch the whole thing. I know it’s a lot of steps, but hey, it’s a hobby, and it works very well for me.
The assumption being that pitching 250B or so cells at high krausen constitutes underpitching.
If the yeast mass doubles it’s cell count just shy of 90 minutes in the wort then your not really underpitching. It’s all relative.
Like many have said the mechanics behind the SNS starter can be abstract and offer a different paradigm to the one proposed by the now ubiquitous yeast starter calculators.
Like Denny has said many times, “What works for you may not work for other homebrewers.”
I’ll also throw my hat in for not using Mark’s method for lagers. I’ve tried it and have not experienced a clean lager with it. Apples, pears, and other esters that aren’t what I got with my usual 2 packs in a 4L stirred starter for a 5g batch. I have abandoned the shaken, not stirred method in lagers.
This does nothing to make me want to try it on a lager. I’ve done SNS on regular-ish OG ales and it works well. But a healthy pitch of slurry is all I want going into my lagers. Thanks for the feedback.
For lagers I use 1L oxygenated starter with no stirplate, sat in my fermentation chest at lager fermentation temp, and pitch the whole thing at 12 hrs. Same as ales, but cooler and 4 hrs longer wait.
Edit: I am not trying to get anyone else to do it. I’m fine with being the only home brewer who does it. I will say that if you listen close to Dan Gordon interviews, you find that Gordon Biersch is made with what would be considered an under pitch of “yeast in exponential growth phase”. Meaning, they do it too. I’ve never tried their beers though, so maybe they suck.
No argument here, my thought is, not knowing for sure what might happen after a high krausen pitch, my goal is to make sure I pitch an adequate number of cells to begin with. That way, the jump start I get by pitching all those cells at high krausen is just icing on the cake.