doing a starter with wort from the intended beer

[Thirsty Boy]

I no-chill every brew, so making starters from the same wort as the brew is a regular occurrence for me. BUT - I always dilute the wort down to around 1.040. I want healthy yeast and think that the gravity of the starter is important for that.

Best of both worlds, you get the same flavour profile in your starter as in the brew... but you get good healthy yeast growth too.

I usually take the gunge thats left over in my kettle, hops, break etc - filter it through a dishcloth in a big funnel. Dilute it and then give the resulting clear wort a quick re-boil in the Erlenmeyer I am going to do my starter in.

I usually don't need all the wort I get from filtering my trub, so if its a light coloured brew, I freeze it and use it on those occasions when I cant be tossed mucking about with filtering the current brew.

I haven't made a starter out of DME in ages.

[monstersandpie]

thanks junket. this was not a thread intended to be about no chill method.

if anyone gives a crap about the original topic, the beer came out great and i plan on doing this again. cuts down on expenditures on starters.

[Kaiser]

if anyone gives a crap about the original topic, the beer came out great and i plan on doing this again. cuts down on expenditures on starters.

I commonly do this for my lagers. In commercial brewing the practice is known as Drauflassen or Double Batch. While commercial brewers just brew another batch the next day, home brewers can pitch only 1/3 - 1/2 of the wort one day and keep the rest alongside in the fridge. It works best with lagers b/c you keep the wort at colder temps and that are the beers for which you are likely to be short on yeast anyway. I have been doing this for all my high gravity lagers and recently I have been doing this for the lower gravity ones as well. It helps if you do a sanitation (forced ferment test) of the wort that has been sitting unpitched for up to 24hrs.

Here is a more comprehensive write-up: http://braukaiser.com/wiki/index.php?title=Drauflassen

It does require a leap of faith and good sanitation practices during chilling.

Kai

[Thirsty Boy]

thanks junket. this was not a thread intended to be about no chill method.

if anyone gives a crap about the original topic, the beer came out great and i plan on doing this again. cuts down on expenditures on starters.

Sorry - I thought the topic was "doing a starter with wort from the intended beer" ... No chill is one way to do that and so I thought that I was in fact giving a crap about the original topic. Excuse me for trying to contribute and getting it wrong - I'll try to be more careful in the future.