Fermentation is slowing rapidly on this brew and we’re barely done at 60%. I don’t think we can blame Tilt calibration or errant yeast stuck to the hydrometer, but to be fair I’m not opening the vessel just to check. Not much we can do about it anyway. Bit disappointing though, will likely extend the last stage by a few days before cold-crashing.

My first go at making a starter with the newly arrived 5 litre Erlenmeyer flask, and wow – it’s much easier when you’ve got some room to manoeuvre! I still used a small nub of Lipohop but felt that I could have gotten away with less. Might try that next time.

Also new was the Camping Gaz portable stove, which I was able to run from the kitchen sink just in case. The four vessel supports are quite narrow and screechy on the glass, so I didn’t want to take any chances with my new flask or the potential clean-up operation.

I pitched the sachet of Saflager S-189 at 21:00 and set the monster flask on the stir plate shortly afterwards at 13℃. By 07:00 next day there were some slight traces of foam around the edges and I plan to keep it stirring until 21:00 tonight, pitching tomorrow morning – so around 24 hours stirring and 12 hours rest. We’ll see how that goes.

A slightly different approach this time. I’m making the starter just 24 hours before I need it, pitching yeast at 15℃ and keeping the stir plate in a cool room instead of regular room temperature. This is due to a number of inputs;

• Ideal fermentation temperature for S-189 is stated as 9-15℃ so I don’t want to run the risk of introducing off flavours by having the starter spinning away at 25℃, which would be the case were I to leave it in the kitchen as usual.
• I’ve also noted that some yeast tends to become subdued after too much time on the stir plate, so I reckon that 12-18 hours stirring and another 10-8 fermenting should be enough time for the yeast to work up an appetite. We’ll see how this goes.

As per Brewfather calculations I’m using 187g of DME for one packet of Saflager S189, but I daren’t fill the specified 1.9 litres of water into my 2 litre Erlenmeyer as that will have me scrubbing the hob again this afternoon. Instead I made do with around 1.7 litres, and even that needed to be removed from the heat and rushed to the sink as soon as it started boiling. Having cleaned the outside of the flask I repeated this step once more and called it quits – the DME looks to have fully dissolved and is probably sterile now, which is all the boiling does anyway.

Chilling the flask in cool water for an hour did little to bring the temperature down, but that’s to be expected as we’re in the middle of a heatwave (22℃ outside – woo!) so I left it in the fridge for a couple of hours before pitching the yeast at 18.3℃ and moving it to the stir plate. That’ll do, pig.

The Next Day

Once again I’m guilty of not letting my starter get to full power before brewing, but it’s got to be better than just sprinkling the dried yeast onto my wort. The starter is now around 18 hours old as I fire up the B40Pro, and has spent the first third of its life on the stir plate and the remaining time on my windowsill around 19℃. The fact that I’m about 200ml of water below the recommended level may have something to do with the slow start, but at least there are bubbles in evidence, and as long as I try to match the pitching temperature to that of the flask it shouldn’t be too much of a problem.