Is my yeast starter working?

Hi guys,

i'm quite new at homebrewing and its my second attempt to make a yeast starter. The first didn't work, i think i spolied It.

I'm just doing the second one, with a vial of White labs california ale.

I'll explain what i did, step by step, please if anyone have experience in this topic can help:

-Washed the flask (2 liter) with water and soap, then esterilazed with chemi oxi. I also spraied it with some etilic alcohol 70º.
-Prepared 1,2 liter water and 120 grs of malt extract and boiled for 15'. Here came the first incident: overbolied, and i finally got 0.9 liters, so i had boteled water until 1,2 liter (my mistke i didn't boil it...).
-When the flask was at a temperaturte you could hold in your hand, I added the yeast Vial.
-Put all in stirplate in the kitchen, where room temperatura is 18-20 º celcius.

Here are a couple of pictures. First is at 12 hours, second at 36 hours. The color has changed, and there is a lot of solid material in the wort, but nearly no foam on top...

So the question is, is it spolied? Should i throw it away? Any advice?

Thanks!

Jesús.

If it were me I would use StarSan to sanitize.  Not sure what you mean by

When the flask was at a temperaturte you could hold in your hand

Click to expand...

, but I wait till the flask feels pretty cool to the touch.  Did you use an ice bath to chill it?  You wont get a lot of foam when you stir.  At 36 hr your starter is way ready to go. 

Hi KernelCrush:
- StarSan doesn't exist in Spain, we use Chemi Oxi instead, is a oxigen active cleaner that you don't have to rinse after.
- The flask wasn't very hot to touch. I didn't use ice bath because i was waiting for the vial to get room temperature, so a left the flask to cool at room temperature.
- That's my question: i don't know cause of my short experience is my starter after 36hr is ready...
Thanks a lot,

Jesñus

OK I see the products you used now.  I try to pitch a starter near the planned fermentation temperature of the yeast I am using.  And I try to pitch the starter within 24 hours, usually much less. If you have your batch of beer ready to pitch it into now I would do it.  If you are not ready to pitch or have any doubts, I would let the starter settle, decant the old starter wort and add fresh starter wort for 12-18 hours before pitching. Here is a good articlehttp://www.mrmalty.com/starter_faq.php

When using a stir plate you often won't see much foam. What you will notice is that when you first pitch the yeast the slurry will appear thin, you will have a nice vortex and the liquid will spin at a good speed. Once the yeast starts doing its job you will notice that the liquid will become thicker and the rotation will slow down. What you want to look for is when the liquid thins out again, faster rotation, which is an indication that the yeast has exhausted the available fermentable sugars.

Also, before you pitch the yeast, put your cooled wort on the stir plate on high for 20 minutes or so to oxygenate the wort prior to pitching.

-Dan

Hi Dan,

thanks for your answer.

I think what i'm gonna do is to cool it to fridge temperature (abour 5º celsius) to settle the yeast, take the samples i need to freeze and add fresh wort with nutrients.

Is any chance the starter is contaminated? How can i know that?

My main question is how do i know the starter i've done is in a good health?

Thanks

Jesús

The starter looks fine.  There is clearly yeast growth in that wort. 

There's no reason to worry about the loss of 300 ml of wort, and the additional dilution from adding water back.  Your wort should have been around 1.030 SG...that's perfectly fine for growing yeast. 

The bottled water was, more than likely, uncontaminated.  If you had used water straight from the faucet that would have been more of a concern.  So, I doubt that it got infected.  Everything else sounds fine.  I'd say taste it to see if it tastes "bad", but you probably don't know what starter is "supposed" to taste like.  None of them taste like "beer".  Often they just taste kind of watery, without much flavor at all.  But, if it tasted sour or some other strong flavor that would be an indicator that it got infected.  However, most of those things take longer than 36 hours to grow and develop. 

I would recommend that you cool your starters a little more before you pitch.  If the flask was still warm to the touch then you were probably around 33-34C.  It is preferable to pitch starters closer to 20C.  Temps above 32C can result in strange growth patterns in the yeast. 

You didn't mention using any yeast nutrient.  It is advisable to add some yeast nutrient before you boil the starter.  When you grow up a new colony, you are creating quite a few new yeast cells.  They need extra nutrients to be able to grow properly.  Adding a small amount of yeast nutrient is a way to ensure that they have everything they need and grow up nice and strong.  This is even more important if you plan to store this yeast (which is sounds like you do), or reuse it for multiple generations. 

The above are recommendations for optimizing your starters.  None are necessary to make an acceptable starter.  I don't mean to imply that your starter is "damaged" by the process that you followed.  But, the whole point of a starter is to make healthy yeast.  So, you might as well take every advantage you can to ensure you've got the healthiest yeast possible. 

How do you intend to freeze the yeast?  50% glycerine / sterile water solution...frozen at -18C?  What size samples?

You should have a large volume of yeast at the bottom once it settles.  You can try smelling it after you decant, but there is really no way to determine if an infection has started this early on.  If you were diligent in your sanitation every step of the way you are likely OK.  You may want to read up on freezing your yeast if you are planning that.

Hi Tom,

yes i forgot (literaly forgot because i bought it...) the yeast nutrient...My bad!

Once the yeast in the flask is settle, i should take like 4 vials of 20ml aprox, the idea (reading some documents) is 20% Glycerine, i've bought one vegetable in the pharmacy the use it to prepare "Bach Flowers" (ok now you can notice my english is not accuratte), 60% liquid yeast, and 20% empty, just in case of expanding at freeze. If it goes well i'll end up with 4 vials of 10-12ml of Frozen yeast.

I do not think that 20% glycerin is sufficient for home freezer applications.  the 20% glycerin approach requires maximum storage temperatures of approximately -40C or below.  Many homebrewers (including myself) have had success with a 50% glycerin solution and storage at -18C.  It is also important to protect the yeast from the defrost cycle of most modern refrigerators. The defrost cycle warms up the air in the freezer to melt any frost that may have accumulated.  This heating and refreezing will kill the yeast very fast. 

So, you want to keep the yeast inside of some insulated container, so that its temperature never fluctuates during the defrost cycle.  I keep mine wrapped in a blanket of gel icepacks.  This gives me about 12 months of storage. 

it is also important to allow the yeast to absorb the glycerin into the cells before freezing.  Generally, this means creating the vials filled with the yeast and glycerin mixture and placing in the refrigerator for 24 hours.  Then after the 24 hours, transferring to the freezer for long term storage.

I think that Chris White and Jamil wrote about this method in "Yeast".  But, I honestly don't recall at this point. 

Thanks for the tip! I'll do this way, 50% glycerine!