Starters and Pressure Canning Wort
When I originally started brewing, I never made a
starter. I had decent results, and
whenever I made a beer with an original gravity higher than 1.060 I always
tried to reuse yeast from a previous batch.
The reason I didn’t make a starter was not because I didn’t think I
needed to for proper fermentation and reduced lag times, it was because I HATE
TO MAKE A STARTER. More on that in a
second…
If you want to make a starter the traditional way, then
Mike Uchima has an excellent page on that called Making Yeast Starters.
My problem was, I just could not stand spending 20
minutes to an hour getting yeast ready for the brew day. What I really wanted to be doing was
brewing. Also, I hated being a slave to
the smack pack. I always found that
waiting on those things to swell was an absolute pain.
Then I found the “Confesions of a Yeast Abuser” page,
although recently Domenick Venezia has renamed the page Yeast Starter – With Stirring
Aeration.
I swapped a buddy some homebrew for a stir plate, and was
off to the races. I modified the original procedure slightly. I figured if the outer pouch contains the
yeast and the inner nutrients necessary for yeast growth, why am I adding
YNB. So I just smack the pack and
immediately put the package contents into the stirred starter.
Also the article refers to the stirring as aeration. I believe this to be true initially, but
after the fermentation of the starter begins, the starter is giving off CO2, so
with an outflow of CO2 from the starter container, I cannot see how much
additional air can be getting in. I
believe the stirring helps get the yeast in contact with the wort and adds air,
which leads to a larger yeast population.
Of course all this is conjecture on my part, but it works like a champ.
Here is a picture of my stirrer, an Erlenmeyer flask, and
a mason jar.
Now I was no longer a slave to a smack pack, but I still
had to make the dreaded starter. Very
soon I tired of making the starter. I
found it to be boring and tiresome.
So I searched a little more and read a few articles on
Canning Wort. Unfermented beer wort pH
is not low enough (4.6) to be considered safe for just water bath canning. A temperature of 240 F for 15 minutes is
necessary to kill Botulism spores that could eventually produce deadly
toxins. 240 F happens to be a pressure
of 10 psi in the canner. In my own
pressure canning of wort, I use 15 psi, 250 F, for 15 minutes. For more on
canning you should check out the National
Center for Home Food Preservation, and for more on botulism take a look at
the CDC
website.
This is my pressure canner.
It is an All American, and I obtained it off Ebay for $25 (a steal). It will hold 7 quarts,
or 6 quarts and 2 pints, as shown in the picture below.
I like having some of both size canned, that way if I
want to step up a starter while stirring, I can use more or less wort as
needed. Wort will darken slightly in
the canner, and will also undergo the boil. The picture
below shows wort that has been pressure canned on the right, and on the left is
wort awaiting canning.
It is a little difficult to tell the color difference,
but you can definitely see the hot break in the bottom of the jars.
My procedure is to mash a grist of 100% Pils or Pale malt
and after the sparge to can the unboiled wort. This gives me quite a few
starters. The day I took these photos,
I canned 22 quarts and 12 pints, as shown in the photo below.
So for starters, my procedure is to first use impeccable
sanitation. The I smack the smack pack
and dump the contents into a flask or mason jar and add the canned wort and the
stir bar and place the starter on the magnetic stirrer. I then cover the top loosely with plastic
wrap, or an airlock. Usually I have
aerated the wort by splashing before and as I add it to the flask or jar. I really like the method because I am not
tied to a smack, and I am not tied to a starter. Also when I pressure can starters I am brewing an entire batch of
beer, which is what I wanted to do in the first place!