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Yeast starter not starting well

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edacsac

NewBee
Registered Member
May 18, 2005
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I suppose this question goes good with this forum. I made a yeast starter on Tuesday night. This is the same starter recipe I used a couple of years ago on my first mead, to restart a stuck fermentation, and it worked great. But now not so good.

1/2 cup dry malt extract, 1 pint of water. Boil 15 minutes, remove heat, let cool to 80 deg, shake, add yeast, add airlock.

The only change I made, since I'm adding this to 2 one gallon batches, is once it cooled, I shook, and reduced the liquid by half, then added yeast.

Last time I used this, it was a bubbling foaming mess in a couple of hours, and by the next day I thought it was going to blow the stopper and airlock right off. This time around, I have and 1/8 of an inch bubbles/foam, covering 80-85% of the liquids surface, with the airlock going off once every 20 minutes if I'm lucky. If I shake it, the gas gets stirred up and the airlock will get violent for a few seconds, but it just settles back to a little bit if foam.

this doesn't sound like a very good starter this time.

Temperature had been 75-77 in the house during this, but I'm to understand thats a good temp for a starter. I'm using k1v1116 yeast as well.

I have read some other starter recipes here that use juice and what not, but since I've used this before and if it contributed any flavors or not, I couldn't tell, so I wanted to stick with what worked.

What do you think happened this time? Was it the reduction of liquid, and the yeast have already burned through the available suger? If so, I certianly didn't want to over do it with a smaller batch and the boiled malt liquid as far as added flavor. Sanitation? Temperature?

Bah.. This throws my mead making schedule way off now. Although, if I can't get my yeast to start in a starter, It certainly isn't going to start in the must.
 

jab

NewBee
Registered Member
Mar 15, 2004
557
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50
radiofreeomaha.net
I know this was a while ago but did you ever figure out what happened? Is it possible that the yeast weren't viable (bad batch)? Just curious if you ever figured it out.
 

Oskaar

Got Mead Partner
Administrator
Dec 26, 2004
7,874
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The OC
Ya know edasac I'd suggest rehydrating with Go-Ferm. When all else fails do what the manufacturer recommends.

Cheers,

Oskaar
 
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