How to Make a Yeast Starter

As "Starter" is to grow a larger quantity of yeast for use in your beer from a standard package of yeast.

Benefits:

    * Faster Starts

    * Healthier Yeast

    * Reduced Chance of Infection

Required for:

    * Lagers - Lagers are best started cold, yeast grows slowly at those temperatures

    * High Gravity Beers - Yeast have a hard time growing when there is a lot of sugar

Items Needed:

A sanitized container, 1 qt on up.  We'll use a one gallon jug here.

Dried Malt Extract (DME) - use at a rate of about 1 lb per gallon

Airlock and bung

Saucepan or pot

Sanitizer

First, sanitize your starter container with your favorite sanitizer.  Here I am using Idophor in a one gallon jug.  I have used with success 1 liter flask, 22 oz beer bottles, and wine bottles.

Make sure you rinse well!

Bring malt with water to a boil for 10 minutes.  A good proportion is 1 lb dried malt extract to 1 gallon.

9 minutes left to go

For such small volumes, a ice water bath in the sink is good to cool down the starter wort.

Cool down the wort to room temperature

Into the starter-jug.

The yeast that we will be using to make a starter

Dump straight in

Put the airlock on

After a day, you should see activity

I chill mine over night to pack the yeast in the bottom so I can decant off the "beer" above.

Two lagers at 50F 12 hours after pitching yeast.  The one on the left had the starter, the one of the right, one tube.  After 24 hours the one on the right did start to show activity with full kraisen at 36 hours.