Labels:text | font | black and white | paper | document OCR: MAKING A STARTER-WORT. You want 1 or 2 quarts of unfermented beer wort, similar to the beer you are making, but at about half it's strength. The gravity is not particularly critical , but is it is too sweet, it will start slowly, and if it is not sweet enough, the yeast will run out of food too soon, and will not be adjusted to the richer food it will be introduced to in your beer. Think of your starter-wort as an appetizer, with richer food to nao follow. About two heaping tablespoons of Dry Malt Extract in a quart of water is about right. Boil it, of course, cool it to room temperature, put it into a sterilized gallon jug. Put a sterilized lid on it, and SHAKE IT FOR AT LEAST A MINUTE. The reason for this is to beat air into the liquid. Yeast, when it 18 just getting started, needs oxygen. This is particularly critical for liquid yeasts, which live in an air-proof package. Dry yeasts are raised so as to sid carry some oxygen with them. Boiling the starter liquid drives off the dissolved oxygen, so you re-dissolve some oxygen back into it by shaking. Now it Is ready to receive the yeast .... but the yeast also has to be ready for the starter. The Wyeast packet is ready just as it reaches the full-pillow stage. completely swelled up, at room temperature. At this stage, the yeast inside the pillow is all out of food. If you don't feed it right away, it will either die, or go dormant, so get it into your fresh starter right away. If you are using dry yeast, first it needs a drink of plain water, for about 10 minutes. Then it needs to be stirred to a nice smooth liquid, and then It needs to be fed, but here we have a bit of a dilemma. The best temperature for that drink of water 16 about 100 degrees F. The best temperature For your starter is about 75, and a temperature difference of 18 degrees can cause the yeast to go into temperature shock. 1 like to keep it within 10 degrees. My 101 solution is to start my yeast in about half a cup of 100 degree water in a 20 ounce British Pub Pint. [ have my jug of starter-wort alongside and ready. After 10 minutes, I pour a couple of ounces of the starter-wort into the pint. This warms it up a bit, and sometimes starts it foaming as well . After 10 more minutes, I pour another couple of ounces into the pint. By this time, the temperatures are equalized to within 10 degrees of each other, and I pour the pint into the starter-jug, and plug it with cotton. If you follow this routine, you will probably find that your starter is ready to go, bubbling merrily, in just a few hours, perhaps as few as two hours, certainly no more than eight. At this time, your beer wort must be ready to go. You should not just feed this starter and delay brewing, the starter Is just too big, and eating too fast. You cannot refrigerate it either, this would not kill it, but the cold shock could create a lag phase of several days. 981W 5. Agitation. The British call this "rousing". It's just a good vigorous stirring, so as to mix up the yeast on the bottom, and to introduce a little air into the brew. You have probably heard that beer should be protected from oxygen. True, but not at this stage. Here, the yeast, and particularly Ale yeast, NEEDS oxygen, and some breweries actually bubble air through the brew. If you're in a bucket, just rouse it with a big spoon. If you're in a glass carboy, swirl it around until the yeast flys up from the bottom. Do this at least twice a day. 6. Warmth. I don't mean real hot. 65 - 75 is just fine. If you've done everything else just right, your should have finished beer before the week is over. You could do It at 85, but you won't gain much time, and you will probably lose head. You can compensate for head loss with heading agent, very little, a scant half-teaspoon dissolved in warm water and mixed into the brew just before bottling will do the trick. COPYRIGHT 1990 GFOM. Permission granted to reproduce in full with attribution to Great Fermentations of Marin, 87 Larkspur, San Rafael CA 94901. Telephone (415) 459-2520. Also available on disk, IBM format, for BBS posting. Enjoy
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