Davik Brewing

This is the ingredients for the yeast starter.

I use the remaining wort from the mash tun after the desired volume is collected.

I kick up the gravity to around 1.040 with organic sugar from Trader Joe’s.

You can aslo add malt extract or candi sugar.

Boil the ingredients in the microwave for ease and simplicity. It should take less than 10 minutes to bring a quart to a boil.

Here is the boiled wort, with sugars added and the SG at around 1.045.

I let it cool for about 15 to 20 minutes still in the microwave, then add it to a sanitized 1 gallon glass bottle.

To speed up the cooling process, put it in the fridge or freezer until it comes down to temperature.

For lagers, let it cool to fermenting temperatures. It’s advised to letting the yeast work for a few days at the cooler temperatures and make a few more wort additions to increase yeast population.

This is the yeast working at 46F-48F, with 2 wort additions of 1 quart each.

By the time it gets pitched, it’s reached almost half gallon of starter.

You should start this process about 1 week before brew day, just make sure your yeast is working before you pitch.

You should also pour off any excess beer and pitch only yeast slurry. If your yeast is working when you pitch, just add it all to your fermenter and don’t worry about pouring anything off the top.

Here are my samples for checking gravity.

You can see the color changes from sample to sample.

From left to right, sample at the beginning of the sparge, the end of the sparge and the boil pot.

The boil pot sample is the one you will use to determine what kind of efficiency you achieved in your mash. After you have collected your data from the samples, just add them back into your boil pot -if you want. They’ll just get boiled along with the rest of the wort.

Here is the Oktoberfest primary fermenter working away at 50F. This is 3 days after pitching the yeast.

When it comes close to the end of primary fermentation you can do a diacetyl rest to let the yeast do a clean up before racking to secondary.

Hopefully this has given you inspiration to try all grain lager beers for yourself, or atleast given some insight on how to start making yeast starters for both lager and ales.

Filed under: Brewing 101 on August 1st, 2009