Spilled Yeast while making Starter

Ingredients
1

Hey guys. Was making a starting yesterday evening with abotu 1 quart of water and a half cup of DME, just before adding the yeast I made the genius decision to shake the vial before opening and I lost probably a little more than 1/3 of the yeast to spewage/spill…

I poured what was left into the starter bottle. The brew that I will be making has an OG of 1.070. Will i need to add more yeast to the starter due to spillage?? or should i be fine since one of the main reasons starters are made is to increase cell count any way?

I know i should just not worry and grab a homebrew…but i’m Just trying to decide if I should pitch whatever the starter gives me, or start all over… Any suggestions? i mean is there a minimum amount of yeast required to make a starter of that size? This is only my second attempt at making a starter. I have two days till Brew Day. Thanks for the help!

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You should be fine…I’d just go ahead as planned.

3

You’re making a starter.  Don’t sweat it.  You should have enough yeast cells in the starter to kick off a decent brew.

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A 1 qt starter (regardless of spillage) seems a little small for a 1.070 brew to me.

5

Agreed.  I’d go with double or triple that size.

6

Yeah, since you have the time step it up so you’ll have more yeast.  Make another starter and add some of the first starter you made to grow more yeast.  The pitch whatever you have.  If you have the containers to make a larger starter or more than one starter at a time, do it.  You’ll be happy you went through the effort.

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so make another 2 quarts with DME and add to the container that the yeast is currently added to? should i wait till krasuen forms or just ASAP

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If there’s space, then I’d add the 2 qts.  And doing it ASAP is no problem, 3 qts is a lot less than 2/3 of a vial usually gets added to :)  If you do it now then you’ll have more time for it to finish so you can chill and decant the starter and just pitch the yeast.

9

Since you got the starter going last night, you should be able to add to it any time you want.  Don’t need to wait.

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great. thanks for all the help. so by  “chill and decant” does that just mean toss it in the fridge for some time, then pour out the liquid once yeast has settled? do i want to warm up the yeast to room temp before pitching?

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Yes, once it’s done fermenting, chill it in the fridge and pour out the liquid leaving the yeast behind.  It is better if you let the yeast warm to pitching temps before you add it to the wort.

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Tom, the last few years the “conventional wisdom” has been to not let the yeast warm up before pitching.  The rationale given is that if you warm the yeast up, it will start consuming its nutrient reserves before hitting the wort, and will be less vigorous once pitched.  Do you disagree with that line of thought?

13

I haven’t heard that.  I wonder what they’re doing to their yeast that the nutrient reserves are low?  And why is there not an abundance of nutrients in the media that is left behind?  I’m not talking about letting it sit at room temp for days, but in an hour or so coming up to 60F . . . well, what are the yeast doing with their nutrients?  Not growing presumably, since there’s no sugar present.  I think I need more details about which nutrients they mean . . .  :-\  I’ve never had a problem doing it my way though.

I guess if that’s really a concern and you want to worry about everything then you can temper the yeast by adding small amount of wort at pitching temp to your chilled yeast to bring it up to the same temp.  But that’s probably overkill and more than people really need to worry about.

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Preferably after 24 hrs or so… but you can add it sooner or later if you want.

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It’s my understanding that pitching more than  ±10 degrees of the wort temp will potentially shock the yeast…

Denny, Tom…??

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http://www.brewboard.com/index.php?showtopic=26969

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If you pitch to colder wort, you could shock the yeast, but I haven’t heard any problems about cold pitching into warmer wort.

18

I believe it was glycogen that was the issue, but I’ll see if I can find something more definite.  I can tell you that for nearly 10 years I’ve been taking the yeast out of the fridge, decanting, then pitching immediately , and subjectively it seems to work at least as well as warming it up in terms of getting off to a fast start.  It may even be better, but I haven’t done side by side pitches to ascertain that for a fact.

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Ron, I’ve been doing it for 10 years with no ill effects.

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Thanks!