Comment by Josh Conley on February 22, 2012 at 10:39am

Looking good, now let's see some yeast swirl, woot!

Comment by Jake Wisgerhof on February 22, 2012 at 4:59pm

how does this work? do you have a magnet on the fan and put a magnet in the container? also how much water do you use to how much DME? use the whole vial/packet of yeast? liquid or dry? can i use a 1/2 gallon growler instead of a beaker? do you use a bubbler or just tin foil? how long does it ferment before you pitch it? is it constantly swirling that whole time? sorry for a thousand questions but i want to learn it all and brew better beer

Comment by Josh Conley on February 22, 2012 at 5:02pm

Well Jake that is alot of questions, since you seem to want to know it all, im sure torrey can answer those questions. I would suggest buying the Yeast- by chris white book, the founder of White Labs, its an AWSOME book when it comes to....yeast....as the name implies, so it will answer those questions in easy to read details.

Comment by Aaron Reif on February 22, 2012 at 8:04pm

Lot of good info here too - http://www.mrmalty.com/starter_faq.php

Comment by Torrey Johnson on February 23, 2012 at 8:23am

Jake, Josh is right, that book is killer! Anyways, to answer some of your questions. Yes, it does have a magnet I super glued onto the top of the fan. I ripped it out of an old work hard drive, you need a rare earth (or super strong magnet). It's a computer fan that's 12vold 80mm, you hook up the a power supply that's anywhere from 6volt to 12volts,12 might be too much. 7.5 volts would be best. A white line on the power supply cord is the positive end, just hook that up to the power line(usually red) on the fan, and the other to the ground (black).The power supply I got off an old Zip external hard drive... and yes it runs the whole time. The stir plate magnet swirls around in there keeping the yeast in suspension. Use sanitized tin foil on top of beaker if you can. No bubbler!!!

As for the yeast it's self, usually to a 1 to 10, DME to water ratio. So 1 gram of DME per 10 ML of water, so 200grams of DME to 2 Liters of water... make sense. I hate math!!! Use a beaker if you can, make sure the pH is anywhere between 4 to 6, and let it sit around 68 to 70 degrees.  1 packet is around 100 billion cells, if you use a starter on that packet, and run it for 24 to 48 hrs, you'll have 200 billion cells. Let it sit for about 8 to 12 hrs after wards, decant the liquid and pitch the yeast.  There's tons of stuff on the intertubes on how to do this, this is just what I studied and will be doing. Also, do this only with liquid yeast... you're defeating the purpose by using dry yeast since the yeast supplier has pretty much gotten the yeast ready to go for you.

Comment by Jake Wisgerhof on February 23, 2012 at 10:26am

awesome thanks for the info ive got that book on the way. could i use an old phone charger for the power supply? any idea where i could get those magnets? i dont have an old hard drive or pc around here

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