yeast starter & hops

[Cliff]

So I'm getting ready to pitch.
I have a tube of WLP011. It's a rather nice yeast with great flavor characteristics and settles out nicely too.

The tube is a couple months old but yeast can last for incredible periods in distilled deionized water which is how White lams packs 'em.

I make up the DME with water and corn sugar. I got this urge to add hops. So I did. I added Styrian Golding pellets. My yeast refused to be energetic. I must have used too much alpha acid ( even though Styrian is a low acid hop) 'coz the yeasts were pretty much DOA. I let it funk around for 2 days before I got impatient. Then I doubled the volume of water. Wouldn't you know it they suddenly became happy & little yeasts and took off.

Lesson: If adding hops to a starter be sparing.
Apparently there is too much of a good thing.
End result I got a real strong and fast primary ferment.

[Dublicious]

Just my two cents: Pretty much every time this topic is brought up, the consensus is no hops for starters. There's no benefit, you just run the risk of retarding yeast growth w/ the alpha acids.

[BigBadBrad]

Also, why are you making your starter with DME and corn sugar? Isn't just the DME enough? What was the gravity of your starter?

[Ozwald]

Just my two cents: Pretty much every time this topic is brought up, the consensus is no hops for starters. There's no benefit, you just run the risk of retarding yeast growth w/ the alpha acids.

I typically add 2 or 3 small pellets per gallon of starter wort (I have a 2g mashtun where I make AG starter wort in 1, 2 & 3 gallon batches) Just a little anti-microbial buffer. I get great results with it.

[Thuglas]

Don't add hops to your starters. The oils will coat the yeasts' cell walls. If you're throwing them in as a antimicrobial agent, I think you should be concentrating more on proper sanitation practices.

[Ozwald]

Don't add hops to your starters. The oils will coat the yeasts' cell walls. If you're throwing them in as a antimicrobial agent, I think you should be concentrating more on proper sanitation practices.

The coating at the level I'm hopping is completely insignificant, my lag times & results have always proven this. As for my sanitation techniques, I've got 50 brews in the log book from the past 11 months alone (not much for records before that), ferment mainly in plastic and I've never, ever had an infected batch. Before the last 50, same story.