gravity too highThis past week saw a couple more virgin homebrew experiences in our house. First, on Tuesday, I decided it was time to rack the Caribou Slobber to the secondary fermenter. The beer had been in primary for about 2.5 weeks. When I first checked the specific gravity of the fermenting brew (after two weeks), it was reading only 1.020 – somewhat higher than the expected gravity. I stoppered it up again, gave the carboy a good shake, hoping to rouse the yeast, and put it back in the closet. When I checked again, two and three days later, it had leveled out at a reading of 1.014. Racking went off without a hitch – I sanitized everything, and the auto-siphon worked its magic.

With my primary carboy now freed up, I was chompin’ at the bit to get another homebrew batch going, and, as luck would have it, my brother-in-law had given us a Williams Weizenbeer kit a little while back. One thing that I’ve been reading a lot about on the homebrew forums is the benefits of doing a yeast starter. The basic idea is that the liquid yeast smack packs do not actually provide you with a sufficient number of yeast cells for pitching to a mid-to-high gravity beer, despite what the packaging says.

While I know yeast starters are not always necessary, I was intrigued by the idea, and I wanted to give it a try anyway. Propagate my own yeast before brewday? Hell yeah. I smacked the Wyeast pack (3056 Bavarian Wheat Blend) on Friday night, and it was nicely swollen by Sunday morning. I had the good fortune to hit my local homebrew store – Thirsty Brewer – for the first time that afternoon, and I picked up a few last-minute supplies. I brewed up a starter batch on Sunday evening, following John Palmer’s detailed instructions in How to Brew:

  • boiled 1/2 cup of plain light DME in 1/2 cup of water for 10 min
  • threw in 1/4 tsp yeast nutrient; covered the pot
  • cooled it to under 80 F in an ice-bath, in the sink
  • poured it into a large, sanitized wine jug
  • pitched the contents of the yeast packet
  • covered with sanitized foil, shook like crazy, placed in my fermentation closet

I continued to shake the starter jug as often as possible. There was a nice big layer of active yeast sitting on the bottom, by Monday evening. Shaking the jug nearly blew he foil off the top, right out of my hand. Woohoo. Exciting stuff. Up next: homebrew batch #2 – stay tuned…