Hey all. Making a tribute to Dogfish 60 min IPA tomorrow. The Starting Gravity is 1.079 and I am using a Wyeast smack pack. Going to make a stater for it here in an hour. I don’t know why but I can’t pull up Mr Maltys calculator. Do you guys think the Wyeast Smack pack put in a starter will be sufficient for a good fermentation?
Yes. But I would have started it almost a week ago.
Wouldn’t that only have been important it the gravity was really high
Give YeastCalc at try.
As Mader pointed out though your really, really rushing things for a starter if you want to brew tomorrow. If your supply is close I’d just go get another smack pack or two and enjoy your evening without fussing over a starter.
+1 For a good starter there are two lines of thought. You can pitch it when the starter is at high kraeusen or let it ferment out, cold crash, decant the beer, and pitch the slurry. Either way, it ain’t gonna work for tomorrow. Unless you go get another smack pack and just pitch the two packs without the starter.
From what Wyeast said on their website I should be ok this time. For next time I will take your guys advice. I should have cracked open How to Brew before I did this. First yeast starter, first IPA I guess we all make mistakes
Sorry that I was kinda short with my reply earlier. For my opinion, go ahead and brew tomorrow and pitch that smack pack. Early on, I brewed several beers without appropriate yeast count… Several which have been great beers, so brew confidently.
“Yeast starter” might be a misleading name for a newer brewer. “Yeast readier” might be a better name. The goal of the starter is to achieve the appropriate yeast count for your original gravity. From what I understand, Wyeast smack packs and white labs vials are ready as is for a beer of a gravity of 1.040. I like to give my starters enough time to finish out so that I can cold crash them in the fridge for about 24 hours and decant the spent beer off the top of the slurry
You didn’t make a mistake, you had a great learning experience. A mistake would be like when I forgot to add my whirlfloc tab to my last IPA that I used a pound of hops in. I’m sure others will weigh in and give their excellent advice too… Welcome to the forum! I’ve learned much of what I know about brewing here!
Consider your IPA as a starter for the next brew.
+1 to using 2(+) packs on short notice. Having kids, I do a lot of my brewing short notice style and I do this when I brew on the spur of the moment. OP - Wyeast actually says that 1 smackpack is fine for a sub-1.060 OG beer, but you’re way over that. I’d use two packs.
So it’s the morning after the brew. Pitched the beer last night at about 830 pm. Right now it’s 12:33 pm here in Colorado Springs and holy crap this beer is going crazy. I didn’t use the an extra smack pack because the home brew shops were all closed yesterday. Just used the starter I had made. I am going to listen to what everyone was saying though iPad make them about four or five days in advance.
This was my second all grain batch. I made an English Brown a week ago and this IPA. It looks like the wort has a lot more sediment in it vs an extract batch. Is this normal??
Completely normal. That stuff is removed from extract when it’s produced.
Thanks Denny, just don’t have enough all grain batches under my belt to know what to expect yet. You can read all about this stuff until you are blue in the face. Doing it is a whole different thing
That’s for sure! I remember being blown away when I did my first AG batch (a while back) at the amount of hot break material as compared to using extract. It’s worth it and then some.