Newbie Question - Yeast Starter Material

[J_P]

Hi all

I am new to the world of AG brewing and was wondering - if I bottled up some cooled wort in a sterilised bottle and capped them could I store these as starters for future yeast cultures?

[J_P]

Do you think it would be OK to bottle the wort? or should I freeze and boil it?

[Dirty Davey]

If you bottle and keep it in the fridge it should keep for a short while.

But if you're going to be keeping it for any length of time, I'd freeze it.

[Aleman]

I either use spare wort from the brew, or because I formulate my recipes at 75% efficiency and regularly get 85%+ what I do is to add another 5 L to whats left in the mash tun, recirculate it a bit while the boils underway, then run it off into a small pan, where it get boiled with some old hops, then transfered into the pressure cooker and pressure cooked for 10 minutes. Filtered into 1L flasks and Pasta Sauce Jars (500ml), and pressure cooked again for 15-20 minutes. Once the pressure has dropped the lids are done up and it goes into storage. ( I wrap the jars with cling film while still hot). When I need to make a starter, I break out this sterile wort, wipe the jar with IPA open and use.

The benefit of using past Jars is that the lids have that pop up lid that tells you if the 'vaccum' has broken. If it has you just bin the wort. I've had one Failure in the last three years where the wort was infected with a mold, but the other two jars in that batch were fine