Yeast Starter Help

[Ó Flannagáin]

OK, so I've been making starters for quite some time. They seem to do the trick because my beer always tends to start fermenting in less than 12 hours, sometimes as soon as 4 hours. And, when I pitched liquid without a starter (which I used to do) it would take around 36-48 hours to start... sometimes over 60 hours. I think I'm doing some things wrong/different than most though. I read in a wiki on another site that the easiest way to make a starter is to use 1 pint of water and 3/4 cups of DME, boil it up, cool it and add pitch your yeast. Swirls it around whenever you think about it.. well, this it what I've been doing.

I hear people talking about 1 liter starters all the time though, and I've never had a starter that big. Am I missing something? What is you'lls average starter mix (water amount/DME amount) ?

[DrunkenSatyr]

I use an apple juice bottle (NO clue why I have those around *grin*) so most of my starters are the cakes off the bottom of a half gallon or so of liquid. Nothing wrong with the way you are doing it though. You can still double your cell count in a pint if the sugar is there.

[sanders5x]

all my starters are around 1/2 liter, imho I think 1 L. starters are a bit overkill for a 5 gallon batch. I guess do what ever you want as long as it works

[MrMarbleHead]

I use a 1/2 gallon growler and usually make up about a 1/4 gallon wort at around 1.040 gravity. Seems to work pretty good. I will bump that up to about 1/3 to 1/2 (done in a 1g growler) of a gallon if i am going to split it up for a 10 gallon batch. I tend to use different yeasts on the two halves when i do up 10gallons though so i am always making 2 starters.