question about yeast starters

[peavis]

i made my first yeast starter on thurs night and i originally planned on brewing today but the weather is about to get stormy so im gonna try and hold off till tomorrow. my question is how long do yeast starters last and if i put it in the fridge could i possibly wait till next weekend to brew? the starter was done with 2 cups of water and a little over 1/3 cup of dme if that makes a difference. thnx

[Grog]

Holding off until tomorrow is fine. If you decide to wait until next weekend give the starter a little more wort to feed on, throw it in the fridge and it will be good to go. Just take it out the night before to let her warm up.

I normally will bring the starter back up to room temp (being very careful not to swirl or get the yeast into suspension), decant the spent wort and give it a fresh set of sugars to chow on the day before I brew. I'm not sure how much of a difference that this process actually makes, but I have had stellar results so far. Most of my ferements are going in < 12 hours.

HTH

G

[peavis]

what would happen if i did'nt decant the spent wort and just dumped some more wort into the starter? would it just do nothing or would it mess it up? thnx

[HogieWan]

wouldn't be a problem - you'll just need a bigger container.

[Grog]

It wouldn't mess anything up, but you would be diluting the new wort by the volume of the first starter. Also, I figure I want as little of the starter juice in my beer as possible so I can keep the grain composition as close to the recipe as possible.

[peavis]

cool, thanks for the info guys.