German Brewing

Thanks to roachbrau who employs this technique as well. I won't speak to exactly what he does but I will speak as to how I used it, with great success

Basically, the first 2000ml out of the kettle goes directly into a flask where the single smack pack, or slurry goes. Since I am crash cooling the main wort, and racking off the cold break/trub in the main fermenter, this method puts the yeast at high krausen. Usually the 2 ( high krausen, and trub dump) time exactly. Which this method you have a great activity with in a few hours after the yeast meets the wort, and overall the same time or faster, than a normal starter sees activity.

I have been doing this for years. I always thought I was wrong for doing it, but every time I have done it my fermentation starts significantly faster. I always attributed it to the yeast being in the same environment in which the yeast will be fermenting in the wort.

I used this method the past weekend to brew a helles with 833. 2 liters out of the kettle into a 1 gallon jug, chilled to 65ish before aerating and pitching the yeast. I let it go at 65 for a few hours until it started fermenting, then dropped the temp to 52 and let it go overnight while the rest of the wort was chilling down tk 48. The next morning I had a nice krausen on the starter and pitched the whole thing into the aerated, 48 degree wort.

There was basically no lag time - low krausen formed within 5 hours. It took another 20-25 hours after that before I had vigorous fermentation. Still going strong at 50F.

Works well for me. I try not to pitch the last 5% or so of the starter, to avoid pitching any dead yeast and/or trub. Depending on the initial yeast amount, I see high krausen in the starter within 6-24 hours, and activity in the main batch within 6-8 hours of pitching the starter.

Some less vigorous yeast strains may take a little longer to get going, or require a higher initial pitch rate. WLP860 and WLP838 were both a little sluggish to get going, and fermentation in the main batch was slower to start as well. With strains like this, it would probably be best to double pitch with 2 vials/smack packs.

I usually do 10% of the wort volume as the starter, which seems to work well.

Be careful! Getting the inoculation rate wrong can stress the yeast With the risk of unpleasant tasting by-products.

I finally got around to writing an article about this:
http://www.roachbrau.com/krausen-yeast- ... eview=true